Hello All, I'm trying to reinstall my win xp media center from my oem disc. What I wanted to do was a uninstall and a clean reinstall. after I started I got to the screen where the partions were on but i couldn't delete them so i continued and now I have two win xp media center operating systems on my computer. My question is this, Do I need to delete one or both of the exsisting win xp media center operating systems off my computer, or will following the step by step instructions on the disc delete these automatically when i do a clean install? Also I noticed in the partions there was 4 and 2 were FAT32 and 2 were NTFS. If I do a clean install should that create just 1 partion? Thanks in advance... Tim

You should only have 1 partition when you delete all partitions and reinstall xp. Make sure you delete them all to have only one partition. Jim R

Windows will ask you if you want to install WindowsMCE. Say yes and Windows will search the drive to see if previous installations are on the partition. When it finally stops searching it will give you a list of the two installations plus a choice to install in a new location. Choose to replace the first installation. Then you will get a choice to leave the file system as is or to format. Choose format and all will be replaced. This is dependent on you having only one partition. Pay attention to where the two installs of Windows are. Both should be on C:\. Hope this is clear to you.

Thanks Beginner & Othehill, I tried it again and was able to delete one of the duplicate MCE OS's I had and tried to replace the other one with a clean istall. I choose to reformat the partion and I still ended up with two. So I gave up and got a computer tech friend to wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall MCE for me. But now since OtheHill tells me both should be on C:\ I remember that they weren't. I think one was on E:\. I could delete one each time i tried the new install, but the other one wouldn't let me delete it. It said something like unable to delete, because it had important setup files. That's what confuses me, why would I have to keep an OS that wasn't working right when I was doing a New Clean Install of the same OS?? Thanks in Advance 2bTim

first off is this a brand name computer? as some brand name computer has a partion that would not delete as it like a recovery sector for the pc make in case you lose the disc. the only way to avoid that would be buy the retail version of the MEC 2005. Hope this help. as Im not sure if that is a retail version or not. Have a Great Day ;-D