Reformat and Reinstallation

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How to reformat your hard drive

A complete reformat and reinstallation of your operating system is something that is often required when a computer system has just become too damaged to continue attempting repair. Over time, viruses, spyware, installing and uninstalling programs, and errors that compound themselves can eventually bring even the fastest computer to a grinding halt. Many avid computer users plan a complete restore once every year or two just to keep things running smoothly.

Reinstalling Windows brings your computer back to the first day that you used it. You will lose everything that you installed and saved to your hard drive since that first day.

Check to make sure that you have all the installation disks for the hardware that you mentioned as well as any software that you originally installed. Download and save to CD all updated drivers and software for your Video Card, printers, scanners and any other hardware that you plan to use. If you have downloaded any programs, you will need all your Key codes for them as well.

STEP-BY-STEP

A. You Have Built in Restore

1. Backup All Data.
2. Unplug all USB devices like printers, scanners and palm pilots. If you have several internal cards that you added after you purchased the computer, you may need to remove these.
3. Check Manual for proper key to press for restore or it may show up on the opening screen.
4. Enter restore mode.
5. Follow onscreen instructions. (takes about 30 min)
6. Install Drivers for special hardware (hardware that did not come with computer)
7. Check Device Manager for any Yellow Exclamation Points indicating missing drivers or errors. Click START-CONTROL PANEL-SYSTEM-HARDWARE-DEVICE MANAGER. (Select Classic View) If you have any Yellow Exclamation Points, you will probably need to install drivers for these devices from your CD for that piece of hardware.
8. At this point you have a fairly clean installation and it is time to Update windows. Download and install all Windows updates, especially Service Pack 2 (if not already at SP2).
9. Install and setup any additional external hardware like printers, scanners, Palm pilots, etc. Install each one at a time and reboot and test before installing the next item.
10. Install additional software that you have on CD like Office, Quicken and Photoshop, except Antivirus software. Again install one at a time, reboot and test before going on to the next.
11. Once you have all the hardware and software installed and running, it is now time to install any security products that you may have like antivirus software, Software Firewalls and Spyware/popup blockers. (you don’t want to have too many redundant programs running)
12. With Antivirus software up and running and updated online with the latest virus definitions installed, you can now go online and look for updates for other software or download programs that you want to reinstall.
13. Using whatever method you used to backup your data, you can now restore your data back to your computer. Don’t do this until you have antivirus software running. You don’t want to bring back viruses that may have caused your original problems.
14. You can now go in and tweak your settings to what ever you like, add screen savers and set things up the way you want.
15. Now that everything is up and running just the way you like it, it is time to backup your settings. I prefer to use something like Norton Ghost to make a disk image of this state. If you want to reformat and restore your computer again in the future, you can restore it back to this point instead of all the way back to the beginning, saving a huge amount of time. You could also use Windows XP Pro Backup to make a recovery set. I also recommend using Windows Restore to save a Restore Point at this point. Some people like to set a restore point after each of the steps above in the event that something goes wrong along the way.

B. You have Restore/Recovery CD’s

1. Backup All Data.
2. Unplug all USB devices like printers, scanners and palm pilots. If you have several internal cards that you added after you purchased the computer, you may need to remove these as well.
3. With computer running, insert Recovery CD in drive and restart computer. Note: Make sure your CD’s are clean of any finger prints and smudges by wiping them from the center out. If recovery window does not come up you may have to go into your bios and change your boot order to boot from CD first. (Check your manual for exact key sequence to enter the bios settings)
4. Enter restore mode.
5. Follow onscreen instructions. (takes about 30 min)

Follow Steps 5 thru 15 above


C. Using Windows XP Disk
1. Backup all data.
2. Unplug all USB devices like printers, scanners and palm pilots. If you have several internal cards that you added after you purchased the computer, you may need to remove these as well.
3. With computer running, insert Windows XP Installation CD in drive, ignore the installation screen and restart computer with the CD in the drive. Note: Make sure your CD’s are clean of any finger prints and smudges by wiping them from the center out. A short message will display “Press Any Key to boot from CD” Press key quickly. .If your computer will not boot from the CD, you may have to go into your bios and change your boot order to boot from CD first. (Check your manual for exact key sequence to enter the bios settings)
4. Windows will now load some setup files and if you need some 3rd party disk drivers such as those required for some SATA drives you will have only a moment to press F6 to do this. Otherwise wait until you see the Welcome to Setup screen. This screen will display your current disk partitions. I would suggest using the ”D” key to delete the current windows partition and then use the “C” key to recreate the partition. NOTE: If you have a fairly large hard drive I would suggest creating 2 partitions. One for the windows operating system and another for your data. This way if you want to reinstall windows again in the future, you data will be safe on the 2nd partition.
4a. Once you have created the partition or decided to keep the original partitions, Windows will format and start to install windows as well as prompt you for your Code Key for the CD case. This should take about 30 to 60 minutes.

Follow Steps 5 thru 15 above

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Use a Floppy or a boot cd to get to the dos screen. Some manufactures use a recover CD to do all this for you. But older machines you have too do it on your own. In the Fdisk mode (if you get there) you want to select DELETE prinary dos function first. (3) Then after the machine checks the integraty of the hard drive it will ask you if you want to use the whole disk. Pressing (y) will get you by this as you watch the puter check out the size of the disk. It will select (1) install a primary partition you must press the right key (enter) then it will do it on its own. You must shut of the puter and start it up in dos or start it up with your XP CD. If you have a 98se floppy and are using it to restart the puter with the start-up floppy and select format when it is done, (its slow)
If you have a XP Pro CD all of the above is not necessary,just drop the CD into the CD playler and run the new install. When the screen comes up do you want to reformat the drive it gives you two choices - NTFS or FAT32. I choose NTFS but it is ok to pick FAT32.
I also have a 98 start-up floppy and I use that to start the puter in the dos screen so I can do fdisk and format of the hard drive. With so many puters coming with no FLOPPY drive I did not give a blow by blow on formatting with a floppy. I now use a boot CD that does the job.

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1. Press the Delete key or F1 to get into the BIOS, depending on how your mother board is configured. At the startup screen there will be a message on which to press.
2. Go to the Start section, it may be labeled differently on your computer, but you want to get to the start sequence. The first item should be your CD drive, on most factory computers this is already set to the CD drive. Close your BIOS editor.
3. Place your Windows XP Pro CD in the CD drive. Restart your computer, it will detect the CD as a boot CD. As you go through the different steps it will come to one asking you if you want to keep your partition. Click on C to clear the partition. It will ask you then to reformat the partition.
4. If all your devices are recognized by Microsoft they should be recognized during the reinstallation of Windows. If not recognized then you will have to go through the reinstallation process with each device again.

Not knowing if you have a custom built computer or a brand name or not can make a difference. Usually with brand name computers all you have to do is place the Windows installation disk in the CD drive and it will take it from there, with a few key strokes on your part. But it will only install the items that came with the computer. You will have to install the rest with their installation disks.