What? Why?
My first computer over 10 years ago came with a disc marked “Windows 95 for new PCs”. It came with Windows 95 pre-installed, but it came with a disc almost identical to the retail disc. To recover the computer, as we had to once. You just reformated, installed 95 back with the disc and used to drivers disc to get all the hardware working. Nowadays, computers seem to come with a recovery partition and a pretty useless recovery disc. What a waste of hard drive space and time.
I tend to do a complete wipe every 2 years or so on average now. The two hours it takes to do so is a lot less time than it would take to clean my PC of all the junk 2 years of my (ab)use results in.
Sometimes on basil, I see tech questions where I’d just reformat. Most people on basil seem to have no clue on how to do so, so this is a pretty simple guide on how you would do it. I only have experience with XP, so this guide focuses on that.
Step one: Get a XP install CD and the drivers for your hardware.
Get a retail disc. You can get them on the ‘net with ease. Most are hacked to remove those annoying things like activation and copy protection. If you have problems with that, well, this guide isn’t for you. Just get one from your favourite site and burn it to a disc. Make sure you have everything you need. Ie, if the disc will need a serial and isn’t automatically entered into the setup, check that you have it.
Next, get the drivers you will need. You will probably have a nice list of hardware in the documents that came with your computer (my dell laptop did), so use this to know what drivers you need. Good manufacturers should have a full list of drivers for all their computers. Download all the ones for your computer and put them on a external drive.
Step two: Back up all the stuff you want to keep.
Most settings are found in “C:\Documents And Settings”. Copy the things you want to an external drive along with any personal documents you want kept.
Step three: Install Windows
Boot from that CD you burnt.
You’ll see a blue “Welcome to Setup” screen. Press enter to contine.
Next, you’ll see a wall of text asking you if you agree to the ToS. Press F8 to continue.
You’ll need to delete the old Windows partition. Use the arrow keys to select it, press D to delete then L to confirm. Now create a new partition. Select the unpartitioned and press C to create a new partition. If there are recovery partitions, delete them too. You’ll probably want to use the maximum amount of space available, this’ll make C:\ the size of your whole disc.
Next you’ll be given a screen to format the unformated space. Select: “Format the partition using NTFS file system”, or “Format the partition using MTFS file system (quick)”. The difference is that quick just deletes the boot sector, so your computer won’t see the old partition and will write over anything there. If you don’t select quick, it’ll flip everything to 0s. This the point of no return. Once you format, everything is gone.
Setup will copy files to your HDD and then reboot. Do not let it boot from your CD if your PC automatically boots from it. You must let it boot from the HDD. Setup will now enter a GUI stage and you’ll be guided through on screen. Assuming the disc you burnt is a US copy, and you’re not from the US you’ll be able to change the keyboard and localisation settings at this point to suit your location.
Depending on the disc you burnt you may or may not need a key, and it may or may not already be entered into the text boxes automatically.
Once setup finishes, it’ll boot into XP and you’ll be able to add the first user’s name. If asked to register with microsoft, don’t.
Step four: Install drivers, copy your settings and your backed up files.
You should be now in Windows XP. Go to control panel > system > hardware > device manager. Those with a ? icon don’t have drivers they need. Use the driver installers you got from your manufacturer, you’ll probably be asked to reboot after each one. It’s best to do so. So after a few reboots you’ll have a nice, shiny, new PC.
Copy the settings you copied from your old PC into the same folder structure as before. Copy My Documents or whatever other personal files you copied into their new home.
Enjoy your clean PC.
