Formatting old laptop

ahappychappie

Hi,

I have bought a replacement laptop, old one is slow, however plan is to keep it alive so kids can use and abuse it.

Many moons ago, I would have got my PC to boot from floppy disc first, ran something so you got the ms dos prompt, you'd then type format c: (panic for a minute!), once formatted reinstall Windows and you'd have a clean and fast PC.

What's the current best way, laptop has Vista, will probably buy Win 7 license, hence keen to install from completly formatted drive so hopefully it will be reasonably quick.

Thanks.

TakeThis

Make and full model number?

Carrot007

Well if you are going to buy a win 7 licence for it then it is simlpe.

boot from the disk and do a full clean install and be sure to do extended disk selection and format the drive.

Main problem people have these days is the "free" version of windows you get with a machine cannot perform a clean install. It can be set to how it came with the machine, and that means will lots of trial nonsense that needs removing.

TakeThis

Carrot007 wrote: »

Well if you are going to buy a win 7 licence for it then it is simlpe.

boot from the disk and do a full clean install and be sure to do extended disk selection and format the drive.

Main problem people have these days is the "free" version of windows you get with a machine cannot perform a clean install. It can be set to how it came with the machine, and that means will lots of trial nonsense that needs removing.

Actually, you can. It's just more time consuming.

Hammyman

ahappychappie wrote: »

Hi,

I have bought a replacement laptop, old one is slow, however plan is to keep it alive so kids can use and abuse it.

Many moons ago, I would have got my PC to boot from floppy disc first, ran something so you got the ms dos prompt, you'd then type format c: (panic for a minute!), once formatted reinstall Windows and you'd have a clean and fast PC.

What's the current best way, laptop has Vista, will probably buy Win 7 license, hence keen to install from completly formatted drive so hopefully it will be reasonably quick.

Thanks.

Boot from DVD, follow the prompts.

closed

no reason for it to be slow, they aren't when you buy them

google factory restore for your model

or

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2436849

Carrot007

TakeThis wrote: »

Actually, you can. It's just more time consuming.

Well I spose you could take the files and remove the pre installed stuff and create a new install disk, if all the required files and such were there which they are often not. Not gonna go for most people though.

So no, not possible. A clean install woudl never need removal of anything as you would not install the useless bit in the first place. Pretty much all machines not "restore" to factory state. Not clean. There are thinsg to remove.

That is taking more time to remove things is not a "clean install" now is it?

Never said it was not just as good but a bit more time consuming did I ;-)

TakeThis

Carrot007 wrote: »

Well I spose you could take the files and remove the pre installed stuff and create a new install disk, if all the required files and such were there which they are often not. Not gonna go for most people though.

So no, not possible. A clean install woudl never need removal of anything as you would not install the useless bit in the first place. Pretty much all machines not "restore" to factory state. Not clean. There are thinsg to remove.

That is taking more time to remove things is not a "clean install" now is it?

Never said it was not just as good but a bit more time consuming did I ;-)

Honestly, I can't make head nor tail of your post. It is such a jumble of words.

All you need to do it is to download an image of the OS and install it using your existing licence. Subsequently installing the Drivers from the website or Drivers disc.

Very simple.