hi all! Don't know if this is the right forum,so sorry if not. I live in spain and use windows xp in spanish. Is it possible to install xp in english(life would be a lot easier) any body know any articles or web sites on this subject. thx
do you have the english version xp, is the hd formated & is the boot sequence changed in the bios to boot from the cd???
It's not clear what you want to do, do you want both versions on there and dual boot or do you want to replace the Spanish version with the English one? For the latter, it's best to format the drive and install fresh. I haven't tried converting from Spanish to English but worked on a PC that had been converted from Thai to English without reformatting. The NTLDR and other system files were different and were causing all kinds of strange errors by having a mixture of both versions on there. If you want Dual boot, you just need to install XP on a different drive and partition than the first one I believe. I have done that with 98/2000 and BSD/Linux but never tried 2 copies of XP at the same time.
thx xian for the reply! all i want is to replace windows xp(spanish into english) when you say format the drive and install,you mean clear all data(f10)and then have the cd in the drive ready to boot?? It can't be so easy... sorry i'm a newbie at this!!
dpp "do you have the english version xp, is the hd formated & is the boot sequence changed in the bios to boot from the cd?" I don't have xp english yet.the pc will boot from cd rom. Don't know what you mean, boot sequence changed in bios... sorry totaly new to this!!
can use the restore cd maybe as might try to do a restore back onto the hd. can use the xp cd to format the hd or goto http://www.bootdisk.com/ to get a xp bootdisk to format the hd
dpp I don't understand you. "can use the restore cd maybe as might try to do a restore back onto the hd" what do you mean by this?? i'm new to all this!! can i use the restoration cd to format??
Usually a restore disk is one that the manufacturer gives you that just restores it to the way the original configuration. It erases the hard drive and reinstalls the OS that you got when you bought the PC. If that is the case then you probably can't use it. You can either go to www.bootdisk.com and download a bootdisk, boot from it and format or maybe the english version of the XP CD gives you the option to reformat when you boot from it. I can't remember since I have always started with an erased hard drive.
Xian; so, what you are telling me is that I must clear completely to have a blank hard drive. Yes, my resoration CD is exactly the way you described it. Then, I guess I'll have to download one of those bootdisks. Is that a straight forward process (using the bootdisk) to erase the hard drive? After that, would I just install the XP CD? Sorry for all this asking... but, if I wanted to upgrade to XP Pro, would I need to go through the same process? Thank you for your help!
if like win9x boot disk, once you get to the a: prompt, type format c:/q it will ask you yes/no to format & select yes than formats the drive. if select cd rom support when booting off a:drive than goto the drive letter assigned to your cdrom, install the cd & type setup. or remove the floppy disk, insert the xp cd & restart the computer so can boot off cd & load windows.
This is just to let people know what i did to change windows xp from one language version to another. I had big problems being able to formatt the drive,and thought i had to use a dos f/disk. it was'nt Necessary.If you are having problems,like i did just follow this. cheers If you have a bootable copy of Windows XP on CD, just change the boot priority in your machine's BIOS (Generally you can enter the BIOS setup by pressing delete at the POST and the settings should be in either "boot" or "advanced") Once you set the initial boot device to you CD/DVD-ROM insert the bootable Windows XP disk into the drive and when prompted "Press any key to boot from CD..." Hit enter and the set up will begin. Now after loading the initial files it should come to the set up page. "Hit enter to Install Windows" is what you want. Then it will search for Windows installations and ask if you want to repair the installation, hit the ESC key to bypass this, hit the F8 to agree to the EULA and it will bring you to the partition stage. You want to delete any partition present by highlighting them, one at a time, and hitting the D, then Enter, then L when prompted until you come to "unpartitioned space". At this point hit the C key and create the partition for Windows (Leave it at the default to use the entire drive as one partition) and hit enter. Now you will be given the format options (Quick, normal, NTFS, FAT32) Choose your method and press enter. Now the format will take place and Windows will install clean of any residual of the previous installs.
