tjodrik

What? What's physically written on top of the CD disk?? No, I never install an OS on top of another OS. Before formatting (with 'slow' format) with the XP setup, I had a half-installed Ubuntu. This surprises me too, but I have two good indications now. 1. XP remembers the display settings of a former installation 2. XP remembers the user name of a former installation If anyone can explain this without assuming that the format function in the XP setup doesn't erase all data, I would be happy to see it.

No, the default resolution is what XP used because it couldn't find the correct driver for the chipset. Which should _also_ be what XP uses during a clean install after format. But instead, during the clean install, XP used the messed up resolution that came after installing a bad driver, which was more like 5 colors - I could barely make out anything on the monitor at all - only shades. How could XP possibly do that during clean install, if it hadn't kept the setting from having installed the bad driver? Another funny thing: after having installed Win98SE, I installed XP again, this time with 'slow' format. Now, the user name I gave during the install of 98 was 'X', and when I installed XP, it specifically said my name couldn't be 'X', 'Administrator', or 'Guest'. XP has never said that before, I always, always use 'X'. So apparently, XP remembered that my user name in 98 was 'X', and decided to ban that. _Even though_ I did a full format first. I don't trust the format function in XP at all anymore ...

So this is what I did: Boot from 98SE cd Format c: Delete c: partition Create c: partition Format c: Install 98SE The display is working just fine. In other words, there was nothing wrong with the hardware. The conclusion is that fast format of the hard drive when booting from XP cd does _not_ make Windows lose its previous settings, if it for some reasons believe it should retain them. I'm surprised too, but what other conclusion could there be?

What do you mean with that ? What did it say ? I'd be surprised any vendor wouldn't have a working driver for XP, unless you card is really too old for your laptop to run XP. Format does erase data "enough" for XP to consider them "gone", so there might also be a hardware problem (video memory?) or maybe a Bios setting that you could change. Device Manager had this yellow exclamation point with "Video controller (VGA compatible). But I noted nothing wrong anywhere. So why would XP then retain the messed up display? Installing a display driver in Windows can't possibly destroy the hardware or change the BIOS settings.

I installed XP on this old laptop. It worked just fine. The display also looked fine, but I noticed in Device Manager that it hadn't installed a display driver. The laptop has a Chips & Technologies 655555 (forget how many 5s) chipset, and XP doesn't have a driver for it (Win98 does, though). I went to the manufacturer's website and downloaded the XP driver and installed it. They apparently hadn't done a great job, because it completely messed up the display, giving an extremely low resolution and very few colors. I uninstalled it, but that didn't change anything. So I decided to do a clean install of XP again. I deleted the partition and did a quick format FAT. But, for some reason, XP remembered the old display setting and kept it, even after the clean install was complete. That really surprised me, since I formatted the hard drive and did a clean install. How can XP then keep settings from my previous install?! Any ideas what to do? Edit: The only thing I can think of is doing a regular format instead of a quick format. Is that really the reason? Meaning that quick format doesn't actually delete the stored information at all?