Reformattig HD and Reinstalling windows

I'd like to dump my whole 'puter and start, as it was new ... wouldn't I I tried it once with the program, it came with, however everything I wanted to save disappeared (not really, it's there but I can't access it ) and everything that I wanted to get rid of is still there "in part".

Is there an easy process to do this? I've got most everything that I value on a thumb drive.

You can do this but the procedure depends on the manuafacturer, for me its simple matter of sticking my windows disk in and reformatting the drive and installing windows from scratch. But my computer is custom build and the disk has full copy of windows on it. Other manufacturers provide restore disks that pull a image off your drive or the disk itself.

Do you have a restore disk?

Who's the manufacturer of of your computer?

To really kill everything you don't want to reinstall windows as this tends to leave fragments of previous install behind. Instead you want to reformat the drive and do a clean install.

It's a Dell, with XP Home. I'm not sure what their restore disk has on it.

Put the disk in the CD/DVD tray, restart your computer. Your compouter should boot from the disc instead of the HD. See what it says. You can exit out of the install screen at any time and resume normal boot from HD.

Post what kind of information you get if any.

Should be noted I have very little experience with Dell's so there may be the easy and hard way to go about this. Here's a article here about doing it on Dell with a disc, It appears it wipes everthing and you'll have to reinstall all your drivers and software as well if you go through the disc install. I did few Google searches and a few pages mentioned a restore partition that contains an image of the factory install, that probably includes everything like the drivers and software.

http://www.pctechbytes.com/dell.htm

Guess it depends on what route you want to take but personally I prefer the first, drivers are easy to get and install. Mostly you need to get the ones for the display and sound... On a fresh install like that windows installs a generic drivers for both sound and video disaply. You just have to go to manufacturers site and get the latest and greatest for full functionality. If that only does a fresh install of windows only the other benefit is you'll have very clean install without all the crap Dell load onto your computer, you then install any applications that you need/want.

Dell does has support forum, I'd look around there and elsewhere before deciding what you are going to do.

EDIT: one last note, make sure you have the XP installation KEY. You will most likely need this to reinstall, it can be found on various things. Manual, sticker on the computer...

I typed a beautiful response of what happened and it disappeared.

The disk doesn't appear to have the programs or drivers.
When using it, it gives you the option of "update" or "reinstall", while saving your information or not. ..kind of a "band aid thing". I believe. I'll spend some time on the Dell forum, later. Thanks.

Dallas wrote:while saving your information or not. ..kind of a "band aid thing". I believe. I'll spend some time on the Dell forum, later. Thanks.

The second option here is probably the clean install one but I really have no idea.

I used the "reinstall" before and it backed up everything, but I can't seem to get to it. Someday I'll get ballsy and dump the "backups".

There really is no backup, the only files on your computer that need to be backed up are the ones you've created yourself. Beside whatever images/documents you may have you will probably also weant to consider exporting your email address book and favorites from your browser. There is probably some other things I'm forgetting here.


Clean install is always the best option as it removes any/all possible conflicts/ vruses or anything else on your computer that may be causing problems. It is quite a task to do this though, there are probably many things you have configured that you don't even remember doing... Everything goes back to the default including any programs you have installed because you will have to reinstall them.

As mentioned the drivers are quite easy, you're not going to be left with as useess computer because Windows will install a generic driver for most devices like sound and video but if for example you have a really good graphics card many of the features it has will not be available until you install the drivers. You can og into the device manager before installing to find out what devices you need drivers for, specifically the video card as that is probably the most important thing. Other things like drives you don't have to worry about. Go to the manufacturers site and download the required drivers.. Install.

Also note you'll want to make sure you have discs for all the software you want to reinstall. If you take a look at all the crap that gets installed you'll probably find that 90%,is just that and you never use it anyway.

If its a fairly new Dell (I think around '03-'04), it has a built in ghost on the hard drive to bring it back to new condition. You don't need any discs to restore it. PM me for the details if you want to bring it back to the way it was when delivered. I did this when my computer was jacked up with root kits and viruses, worked like a charm and no grief. Its just a couple of keystrokes and your in business.