Well, I just put the XP disc in then as soon as it loads the set up screen I follow the instructions till it says install xp, then It asks where to install it, I select the drive, it tells me I already have a installation there so do you want to erase it, I select yes and it wipes the drive then goes straight to the install process, I have every thing disconnected (printer, scanner.camera) except my keyboard, during the installation it searches for plug and play devices and install the drivers accordingly, once the install is complete I install my firewall & anti virus then put my motherboard disc in and install my graphics and sound drivers, my modem is not effected as its a router and stores all the settings in it which xp locates immediately after install is complete, the only thing I have to do is configure outlook express. hardware such as th above are installed last with the software disc that came with it, finally I run windows update to get things fine tuned thats it, once i am happy then I use Norton Ghost to copy my drive so if I have a problem like you in the future I just restore from my ghost image and I don't have to go through reformat process from scratch.