formatting a pc

[Seamus]

i have a dell pc that is 5 years old. It crawls along and I was thinking about formatting the hard drive and re-installing windows. Does anyone have a link to an idiot proof guide for doing this?

thanks,

[z_28]

Basically if your computer is powerfull enough to carry Windows XP and you have Windows XP full instalation CD - just follow instalation instructions.

One bad hint - since several years factory made computer do not come with real Windows instalation disks !!!
My last real Windows instalation CD which come with new computer was Windows 98 :wink
So with yours Dell disk you probalby can do re-instalation only and with exact model of computer only.
Or buy full version CD.

[dogwood]

If your harddrive is five years old, you'd be better off getting a new drive. Harddrives do wear out and new ones are cheap (500 GB for $130 US at newegg).

You could then use a utility to clone your existing drive to the new on and boot from there. Or buy Vista and install it fresh. XP is still great (and it's what I still use on my production machine) but we all know XP will eventually be mothballed and unsupported and Vista will be the only way to go if you want support and updates.

[Seamus]

I have formatted the drive and re-installed windows.. some new gray hairs and a lot of bad language :humungus but everything seems to be working ok. It does seem faster.

[Shima]

Good to hear that you got it formatted and reinstalled.

If you're worried about the integrity of the 5 year old hard drive I highly recommend downloading something called DFT (Drive Fitness Test) that Hitachi makes which lets you run diagnostics on a hard drive to make sure it is will working properly.

[Seamus]

I used the info from this site (http://www.cyberwalker.com/faqs/reinstall-reformat-winxp/index.html). It was fairly straightforward.

The hard drive seems ok, the computer had slowed down so much over the years I decided to format and start again. I had Norton anti-virus for two years before switching to avg and was never satisfied that I had managed to completely get rid of it. Formatting seems to have done the trick.

thanks for the advice folks, :thumb

[cmason]

I found the best way to do this is to buy a new harddrive, format it using the included tools on the CD (with Harddrive), then install Windows as usual. Then simply use your old disk as a data disk. No worry about losing any files.