Quick Q about reformatting pc

Hi all

i wish to restore my pc to its former glory, as its not been reformatted in around 2 years it has slowly become slower.

Since i've never reformatted before, but consider myself reasonably techonologically savvy i was just wondering if you could give me a few pointers.

As i understand it i need to back up anything i wish to keep off my HDD onto my external drive. Then i go to the bios change it to primarily boot from cd before hdd. I have the original XP cd and cd key so all is well there.

Then i'v herd its all straight forward from there, i would choose ntfs NOT the quick option iv been told i dont know why though.

Then continue through the install. Then all i have to do is install my programs? or do i have to install any drivers for my motherboard or sound card or anything like that or will windows install those for me?

One question is i have a hardrive that comes up in device manager as: IC35L120AVV207-1

i typed this in google and put 120gb after it and it came up with loads of sites saying its a hitachi HDD. Could somebody tell me if this is sata or not ? as i herd you have to create a floppy disk for installing sata drivers or something.

Once windows is on then its just a simple case of installing my programs then ?

Also, any other pointers or anything iv missed please feel free to post.

I did a quick search of the forum but didn't find much about the drivers etc

thanks

chris

 

im fairly sure it isnt sata as im sure that my pioneer dual layer burner is conected on my sata socket.

My motherboards drivers i dont have the cd for it or my sound card/video card but i presume i can just download them from the internet ?

I install these after windows has been installed i presume ?

 

What I do is burn my Av installer and favorite's to a CD and then disconnect from the net because I once got infected before I could install it. You should also have your driver's because you may not be able to access the net (I can't, some can), this program find's them all and is free. Just burn them to a CD if you don't have the driver CD for your Motherboard: http://www.innovative-sol.com/drivermax/ After you change the boot order in the Bios and are booting from the CD and pressing any key to continue when prompted (pay attention, it's fairly fast) and thing's install, pay attention again to delete all on the partition or you'll end up with 2 Window's after, you'll need to enter the key (have it handy) and make a few selection's (keyboard type, time zone, etc). It's pretty straight forward from there. When it finishes, copy your AV installer and favoriote's folder over, install your AV, install your driver's at device manager, reconnect, update your AV, import the favorite's, follow the prompt to activate and you're set to do whatever. Do a full format, not quick as you said.

 

cheers matey

sounds like im all set, with that nifty little program for my drivers, as long as that gets my mobo drivers etc then i'll be sorted and confident in doing it myself =]

thanks for the help

if you dont hear from me by mid week next week complaining that i now have an oversized door wedge then assume all went well =p

thanks guys

 

its because a quick format simply hides the files and they are written over when new things are put on. Not quick actually deletes them and makes things faster

 

yeah that makes sense =]

i downloaded drivermax and pretty much the only drivers not signed / by microsoft are my printer, sound card and wireless card but i have the cd's for those except my sound card which i downloaded off the net anyway

by the look of it my motherboard's drivers and evrything else are all microsoft so i should be alright without the cd's ?

 

Should be fine but there's plenty I'm not aware of. Just reformatted yesterday and used DriverMax just to test it out. Worked like a charm. Like I said though, sound's fine.

 

Have you tried to defrag your hard drive first? Maybe that's all you need. I use "ultimatedefrag" which keeps my computer hard drive running good.

Reformat is too drastic of action to take for a slow computer. Check your hard drives are properly set to DMA. Do a complete scandisk.

Whatever you decide to do, use the below free program to make a backup of your c: drive. Worst case scenario, you'll be able to restore your computer to it's current state.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

 

Yes, definitely get some kind of an image program with a boot CD. Macrium is very good from what I hear, I use Acronis True Image, although an older version, countless other's around, freeware and payware, and I can't tell you how many time's it's saved me. Good for testing program's, just roll back to an image you make before installing the program if you don't like it and it was never on your computer. Incidentally, reformatting is a drastic step but I reformat as a kind of maintenance and I'm sure I'm not alone. Kinda fun except for installing all my program's, besides, an image restore of a fresh install take's 5 minute's. They're not hard to use, a second drive to keep the image on is best and you can get back the space System Restore use's by disabling it, haven't used it in year's. Almost make's computing too easy, could save you a small fortune too.

 

i hardly consider it a drastic step, like mistycat said, its more of a maintenance thing, yes iv defragged etc countless times but you're generally supposed to reformat once a year just to keep things running as they should, all nice and smooth and.... as fast as possible

thanks for the tip about creating the image though i'll definately look into that sounds like an invaluable backup

thanks for the help guys

chris