I'd like to reinstall XP on a E1505 but...

... I may have a few conflicts. Namely, not long ago I upgraded (cloned) my HDD to a 120 GB Hitachi. What happened is that I had to delete Media Directs HPA (hidden partiton) so I got a full 120 GBs. Not to worry I don't use MD anyway.

Moving on, I formatted the new drive into 3 partitons. The 1st is the Dell diagnostics partition, C: is WinXP (29.3 GB) and D: is a Data partition (83.3 GB) that includes My Documents. (moved over from C using an ElderGeek tutorial). I have the XP MCE reinstall and drivers CD Dell originally sent.

Now to the questions.

What's going to happen? Can I just reinstall XP to the C: drive and will it create a new My Documents?

I have an external HDD, can I save some programs such as CyberlinkDVD (Dell says they don't have a CD to sell me) or any others I can no longer download that are on the C drive? How?

What about Intel Wifi, is that on one of the CDs?

Anything else I may be missing? Things to make sure I don't do

One more thing, can I just download SP3 rather than all of the XP updates?

 

Yes it will create one on C: by default.

You can save them if you have the installer. I don't think copying the folders will do you much good, since it won't copy the registry settings. You might want to back up your data files there though.

Is it Cyberlink PowerDVD you're talking about?
Dell should have discs for that.
Whether they supply them with your model I don't know.

I think that's here
E1505 drivers
last one under Network. It should be on your driver CD too, but the one on the driver CD may be an older version.

Isn't it still in beta?

 

Yeah, I guess it is. I was reading the release notes! It looked like a download page but without the download button!

Thanks for the advice.

I'll have to call Dell back about getting the CD's I need and look online for the other programs (that are no longer supported) I don't want to lose.