Wipe and start again?

kam1nsk1

Hello

I have had my computer for about 2 years or so, but not being the most careful person it has slowly become completely bogged down with viruses and pop ups etc, to the point where it is so sloooow it barely functions at all.

It doesn't really contain anything I couldn't live without so I think the best thing to do would be to completely wipe it and start again ( this time being a little more attentive to security!)
Only trouble is I have very little knowledge of how to acheive this, and also I'm not entirely sure where the various driver disks are.

I will pay if I really have to but have been led to believe that this shouldn't be too difficult and am fairly keen to have a go myself (worse case scenario is I have to pay so meone to sort it out anyway, so what's to lose?)

Can anyone suggest a good website that will explain how to do this or else an suggest an alternative?

Any help greatly appreciated!

Minski

jasonrat

i have wiped everything with disk or drive scrubber and this wiped everything off completely. i had 98 then installed winxp. if there is nothing on the comp u want to keep then i would do it that way( other people might think otherwise but i was confident what i was doing)

theCapt

remember you will probably have windows activate probelms if using Win XP after reformatting.

worst thing to happen is you keep getting annoying messages asking you if this copy of windows is genuine and you may/probably have to phone microsoft and speak to some indian to get it sorted(which still mightnot resolved the probelm).

Wig

What sort of Windows are you running 98, XP, etc?

What sort of hard drive structure do you have? For example I have a single drive divided up into partitions c, d, e, f, g....

You may have partiitions but be unaware of how many physical drives you have. it's of no real importance but you can see if you are quick to read the start up text when you switch your PC on, and if you really want to be sure you can press esc at boot up and enter the bios to see for yourself.

I recently reinstalled win 98 on my machine, it was made slightly difficult by the CD rom being a bit scratched, but I got it done in the end. One thing I learned was to save my favourites in Internet explorer, I have lost all my favs which took me years to save up! So if you value your favs make sure you save them there will probably be a file called favourites or something in the IE folder.

First thing I had to do was make sure I had a floppy start up disk, to boot from cold, then you choose start with cd rom support then you choose format c:\ then you go to your cd rom drive (and confusingly it will be 1 letter higher than normal, so if it now drive K it will be drive L in the start up disk mode) then automatic windows installation will run from your CD rom and you can just follow the on screen instructions.

You will need various drivers after installation, for your modem or broadband stuff (you'll also need your ISP passwords, and maybe your monitor....took me ages to get my monitor sorted out, but now it's better than it used to be!

I'm not qualified to help you with this especially if you are not running win 98/win98SE there should be others here more qualified.

I just reinstalled/formattted on drive C: I found all my information on drives e f g h was left intact and most of it I can still use though the programs have not been installed properly on the new windows, but I like you don't use it all very much so I don't care.

kam1nsk1

I'm running windows XP. Sorry but I'm not really following what I should do.
I don't know what a disk scrubber is etc.
I'm pretty sure I have a single drive, doesn't have any partitions that I'm aware of.

If someone can give me a step by step that would be great, or else suggest a website for computer novices!

Cheers

Minski

alared

Is it a Dell? these are partitioned on the hard drive to restore to factory settings.

Download and run http://www.ccleaner.com/

You`d be surprised the amount of rubbish this will find and clear off your drive.
Must say it`s a bit drastic to wipe everything off but if there`s nothing on it you want

---

wipe it.

theCapt

want you want to do is find out your hard drive manufacturer, once you have done that they shoulld provide formatting software from there website. Use this software to format the drive and install windows.

if you cannot find out the manufacturer of our hard drive find hard drive formating software online, or you could just use you windows install cd and use the windows setup to format your hard drive.

HappyIdiotTalk

The best advice might be to seek out someone who works in IT or a knowledgeable friend and ask them to do it for you and maybe offer to buy them a beer. If you have IT people at your work, try asking them, if they are anything like the people who work with me they'll try and help you out. Especially if you ask nicely and say please (in most circumstances most Brits wont refuse someone who asks for their help and says please, its simply against our nature to say no - even if it means certain death)!

And furthermore I'm not comfortable with the idea of anyone paying a third party to do this kind of thing. The costs are high and I've not heard many good reports from people who have taken this option.

If any of my friends or family are having problems with their computers, I always offer to have a look at it for them in my own time simply because I hate the thought of them getting ripped off by PC W***d or some other PC cowboy outfit!

Reinstalling Windows can be a very simple painless procedure as you've been told. But! More often then not it can be a very frustrating process, particularly if you dont know what your doing. I've worked in IT for years and still come across things that really floor me. And every time this happens I wonder how the average non-IT person would cope with the same problem.

I dont mean to put you off because I think what your proposing to do is a very practical solution to your problems. But unless you have some expertise you can call on if it all goes wrong, you could find yourself in a worse position than you already are.

Do you have anyone who can help you?

LSM_2

HappyIdiotTalk wrote:

The best advice might be to seek out someone who works in IT or a knowledgeable friend and ask them to do it for you and maybe offer to buy them a beer.

I've never worked out why you can pay an IT guy a beer but not anyone else!

I would love to have a builder do some work, I've got a bottle of whiskey for anyone wanting to build a house!

theCapt

LSM wrote:

I've got a bottle of whiskey for anyone wanting to build a house!

Alright, but the house will be made of lego and be about 15cm tall;) .

LSM_2

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

As long as it keeps the rain of my head I don't mind!