Page 1 of How do I format my hard drive?

My desktop needs a fresh start so I would like to format it. I formated my hard drive on my laptop a month ago and it works perfectly. However, it came with a restoration disk. My desktop does not have this disk - therefore will I be able to get it working again once I have formated it. Will it still retain drivers for disk drive and cd rom drive. If so is it just a case of installing windows and all my other programmes. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Best Wishes

Dan

If it`s Windows XP, just put the disc in the CD(or DVD) drive and make sure you tell your BIOS to boot from that drive-you`ll get options to wipe the old data, format..etc..

Should take 40-60 minutes to complete. Make sure you`ve got any installation discs for any peripherals (Like sound / video cards, Motherboard ..etc.. ) XP may have them already, but it may not.. Don`t worry about the CD drives, they are installed automatically.

If you don`t have these, you`ll need to find out make and models then go on line and download up to date drivers for them (Might be worth doing that prior to wiping your old data, save them onto a CD-RW )
.

Also, don`t forget to back up anything you want on the new hard drive-mail can easily be backed up to disc and imported into the new installation-so can favourites. You`ll need all your ISP settings and passwords too.

One tip as soon as you`ve got Windows running in it`s `virgin` state and you can get on line, install all the Windows updates before doing anything else. Even on broadband, Windows XP SP2 is a big download-I do several XP re-installs every week, so I downloaded the the full SP2 and saved it to disc-saves me shedloads of time installing from disc rather than waiting for it to download every time.

This item was edited on Sunday, 26th December 2004, 14:06

Regarding Win XP service pack 2

if you dont have broadband to download it you can order sp2 on cd and they will
send it to you free of charge (takes about one and half weeks)

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/sp2/cdorder/en_us/default.mspx

I had problems with the full version of SP2 as comes on CD. It contains updates etc for just about every process whether your PC needs them or not. I found plenty of software that failed to work properly afterwards including MSN messenger, Norton, etc.

I uninstalled it and used Windows Update to d/l just the SP2 stuff my PC needed. I had no problems after that.

This item was edited on Saturday, 8th January 2005, 22:08

Dan

If you don`t have a system restore CD then you`re gonna need a legit Windows XP install disk. If you`re buying new, get the one with SP2 already integrated into the install so you don`t have to upgrade. If buying new is not an option, then contact your supplier/manufacturer and ask them for a system recovery disk. At the outside, I `spose you could call Microsoft and quote them your CD key, but I`ve never heard of them sending out replacements...:-(

If you format your system hard disk (C: drive), everything you have on the disk gets wiped and all software/data has to be re-loaded including windows XP/Drivers/accessory software e.g dvd players etc., etc.


SN

`Just Craptacular`

This item was edited on Sunday, 9th January 2005, 02:42