I have a computer than has been doing the BSOD now and then, it's about 8 years old, Win XP pro o/s, I have another HDD and I would like to re-format it and set it up as my "C" drive, get it going with all my current "C" drive's programs and files and then re-format the current "C" drive and use the Acronis to clone that drive and use it as a backup, is there a procedure or certain steps I need to do?

-- merged --

Would this be correct?
1 Re-format old drive (it assigned it drive E)
2 Disconnect existing C drive and connect drive E and re boot computer, will it change the E to C automatically?
3 Load O/S and programs on new C drive
4 Re-connect old C drive, will the computer now make it the E drive?
5 Copy files from the E to new C drive and finish setting up new C drive
6 Clone old drive and done?

Missing anything? I don't want to screw this up as this computer is my work computer and need to do something like this before the BSOD crashes it bad.

My 25¢
 

Some of your phrasing is a bit hard to follow, but if I understand you correctly...

1 Re-format old drive (it assigned it drive E) --Unnecessary. You can choose to format this drive when installing Windows.
2 Disconnect existing C drive and connect drive E and re boot computer, will it change the E to C automatically? --Connect only your new drive and Windows will automatically make it the new "C" drive during installation..
3 Load O/S and programs on new C drive
4 Re-connect old C drive, will the computer now make it the E drive? --Likely. You can name the disk with any letter you prefer within Windows.
5 Copy files from the E to new C drive and finish setting up new C drive
6 Clone old drive and done? --Why are you cloning the old drive? You just reinstalled Windows and put all of your files, programs and settings on the new drive. A clone would duplicate your old drive (BSOD and all) and would put you back to square one.

Here is my advice:

1. Before you do anything make a backup copy of all important data. Let me repeat that and expound on it because people usually ignore this advice. If everything important is on your "C" drive, then use Acronis to make an image file of the entire drive and save that image file to a reliable third hard drive not used in this project. Do not clone your "C" drive to this third hard drive unless you are willing to wipe out all data currently on that third hard drive and replace it with a copy of your old drive. Okay? Good. :)

2. If your end goal is a stable machine, I suggest you try to determine why your machine is crashing before you reinstall the system. It might be something you can fix with minimal effort, like removing a bad driver. Or it might be a hardware failure, so reinstalling Windows would be a waste of time. Here is a great guide on how to determine why your system gave you a BSOD. http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/w...mozTocId427576

3. If that didn't work, then try a reinstall as outlined above.

When you reinstall windows as a "fresh" install, whichever drive you select for the install will become the C: drive, any other drives that are plugged in will become D, E, F etc. hard drives will take the next letter followed by optical discs. (IE: Disk 1 C: Disk 2 D: Optical 1 E:)

What kaliree mentioned is pretty spot on.

Like he mentioned determine why your computer is giving you a BSOD first before trying to reformat and reinstall anything. With an 8 year old system that can take a bit of time to get it back where you want it/need it to be. If you can get a copy or picture of the error the BSOD gives you, I can try and hunt down what the error is and what might be causing it.

Personally, I would suggest upgrading to a newer system and use Windows 7. Unless you have certain hardware restrictions that keep you running on older hardware and Windows XP that is. (I know many members here utilize older hardware and XP for video work.) :2cents:

-JMP

I need to keep XP on that computer for as long as possible...

The BSOD happens so fast and the error seems to be on the screen for only a few seconds and it starts the memory dump so I just shut it off and re boot the computer.

Is this issue solved yet?

Well...it doesn't do it often enough to know...

I did replace the video card (64 mg) with a 128, the video is a little faster looking, less jerky on big drawing files...maybe it had something to do with it? I also disconnected everything and plugged back in, might help?

The computer is old, but it is my personal (work) computer, set up almost perfectly and has done me real well or I would not be spending any time on it.

If you are still having issues with blue screens, I would recommend you download/install this software BlueScreenView (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/bluescreenview_setup.exe). This will let you see the error message related to the blue screen.
If you can, install it, and reply with what the error message says.
(More information on the program here: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html)