Rory Franklin

I’m back in London this weekend visiting my family and found myself with a fair bit of free time this afternoon. Whilst generally browsing the internet on the family computer (formally my main computer), I came to the conclusion that it was running quite badly.

Now, because I am studying a technical course at University (Computer Science), the department that I am taught by have a MSDN Academic Alliance account. This means that I am able to download various pieces of Microsoft Software for free, from Microsoft (read: totally legitimate).

Over the last few weeks I’ve been badgered by one of my housemates and some friends from Uni to install Ubuntu on my PC at Uni. I’ve been holding off because I am planning on dual-booting with XP, but just haven’t found the time to get myself properly organised and backed up etc. I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to try out re-installing Windows XP on an old machine that isn’t too important (OK, so my father needs to be able to access his work emails, as he is currently on leave for 6 months or so [he still needs to be in contact etc.]).

So I logged into the MSDN AA website this morning and looked at my options. I had previously downloaded a copy of Windows XP Professional to install on a machine but had never gotten around to doing it. Unfortunately this meant that I could not re-download the file. There were other Windows XP Professional downloads I could have downloaded (such as Windows XP Professional with SP2, or Windows XP Professional (Spanish), XP Pro 64bit Edition), but I was planning on using them on other machines or they weren’t much use to me.

Luckily I could request a new download of a file I had already obtained, as long as I could provide a reason why. I filled out the form and submitted it, stating that I had previously downloaded it, not used it and no longer had the file.

A few hours later I received an email saying that a new download had been activated! I set off downloading the installer and also downloaded the SP2 update (so I wouldn’t have to be connected to the internet having installed XP, and avoid getting any nasty viruses).

Once it was all downloaded and I had burned a CD with the .ISO image (took me a little while to figure out!), I set off installing it.

As I was doing a fresh install, and nothing on the computer needed to be kept (all backup elsewhere), I deleted all the current partitions and created two fresh partitions. One for Windows, one for everything else.

Windows installed reasonably quickly (the machine is about 6 years old I think), and I booted up and installed SP2. Once that was installed, I had to install graphics drivers and anti-virus (AVG Free).

Now I’m currently installing the 104 updates from Windows Update. 104… Woah! Hopefully that is it, but who knows… maybe more will appear afterwards!

The computer runs a lot better now though, especially considering all the rubbish software is no longer installed!

Tags: MSDN AA, XP Profession