and the site receives a small commission
wiping hard drive
- Thread starter Boon
- Start date
- Messages
- 29,408
- Name
- Marcel
- Edit My Images
- Yes
You could always clear your room of everything.
Produce some blood sweat and tears while laying some nice new flooring, building some new drawers and a shiney new desk.
Move everything back in, and hey presto, your HD will be wiped....
Well thats how I just did it anyway :shrug:
(Failing that, mattys response is better
)
Produce some blood sweat and tears while laying some nice new flooring, building some new drawers and a shiney new desk.
Move everything back in, and hey presto, your HD will be wiped....
Well thats how I just did it anyway :shrug:
(Failing that, mattys response is better
)Reinstalling Windows XP is easy. The only stumbling block, is that you need to go into BIOS and set your first boot device to CD.
When you've done that, insert your WindowsXP CD and restart your PC. It will say "Press any key to boot from CD".
After that, just follow the on-screen instructions for removing/creating partitions, formatting the drive, and installing Windows itself. Its very easy.
A small note of caution, however - part way through the installation, your PC will restart again. Do *not* boot from CD at this point!! You already did that earlier, and doing so will cause the installation process to start over.
When you've done that, insert your WindowsXP CD and restart your PC. It will say "Press any key to boot from CD".
After that, just follow the on-screen instructions for removing/creating partitions, formatting the drive, and installing Windows itself. Its very easy.
A small note of caution, however - part way through the installation, your PC will restart again. Do *not* boot from CD at this point!! You already did that earlier, and doing so will cause the installation process to start over.
- Messages
- 2,548
- Name
- Steve
- Edit My Images
- Yes
On my Dell (Inspiron 1300) if you press <CTRL> and <F11> when the blue bar appears after switching on you can restore OS and any supplied software to it original state ie as it left the factory.
Steep
Nutcrack Rapids
- Messages
- 16,633
- Name
- Hugh
- Edit My Images
- Yes
If you just re-install you won't lose anything that's on your hard drive, just the links to it all. Your photos etc will still be there but you'll have to re-install all your programs so make sure!!! you have all the neccessary program discs, serial numbers, drivers etc. to make it all work again afterwards.
I would STRONGLY advise against doing this. There's a high chance that the problem thats causing you to reinstall in the first place will still exist.Steep said:
The absolute best option is to format (NOT quickformat!), and full reinstall. So, make sure you backup anything important first, cos you will lose the lot otherwise.
I'd also recommend that you download and keep WindowsXP Service Pack 2 (about 270mb). It'll save you having to download it every time you reinstall, plus 40+ other updates totalling about 50mb.
- Messages
- 2,302
- Edit My Images
- Yes
It's about time we had a SP3 isn't it? Just to save time on the reinstall!
I second (or is it third?) GfK on the complete install option. You'll have a super wizzy system again if you take this path.
But don't forget to backup everything, and probably note down your internet settings if you have any! Nothing worse than trying to remember email settings when you only ever saw them once 2 years ago!
I second (or is it third?) GfK on the complete install option. You'll have a super wizzy system again if you take this path.
But don't forget to backup everything, and probably note down your internet settings if you have any! Nothing worse than trying to remember email settings when you only ever saw them once 2 years ago!
- Messages
- 1,562
- Edit My Images
- No
I'd also recommend partitioning the disk so you have a system drive for XP and apps, and a drive for your data. That way you can restore the system drive only and not have to worry about backing much up.
Once you have finished installing everything including software and then customising XP back to how you like it, take a Ghost image and keep it safe for future use. Then you can do a complete restore in minutes.
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10
Once you have finished installing everything including software and then customising XP back to how you like it, take a Ghost image and keep it safe for future use. Then you can do a complete restore in minutes.
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=br&pvid=ghost10
- Messages
- 254
- Edit My Images
- Yes
I see that this thread was started in dec last year. Did you manage to re-format Boon? If so, did it all go ok?
I've done it a few times now, but it never fails to scare me... I am terrible at organizing, so always panic that I have forgotten to back something up. :shake:
I once lost all my outlook emails in my inbox. Unlike a sane person, I hadnt resaved the important ones or printed them off. I lost a year's worth of correspondence. That was a fun day for my wife the language coming out of the office would have made Shaun Ryder blush.
I've done it a few times now, but it never fails to scare me... I am terrible at organizing, so always panic that I have forgotten to back something up. :shake:
I once lost all my outlook emails in my inbox. Unlike a sane person, I hadnt resaved the important ones or printed them off. I lost a year's worth of correspondence. That was a fun day for my wife
the language coming out of the office would have made Shaun Ryder blush.
- Messages
- 1,562
- Edit My Images
- No
lumpster said:I see that this thread was started in dec last year. Did you manage to re-format Boon? If so, did it all go ok?
I've done it a few times now, but it never fails to scare me... I am terrible at organizing, so always panic that I have forgotten to back something up. :shake:
I once lost all my outlook emails in my inbox. Unlike a sane person, I hadnt resaved the important ones or printed them off. I lost a year's worth of correspondence. That was a fun day for my wife
That's an easy one
In Outlook go to File>Import & Export and select Export to a file from the list. From the next screen choose "Personal Folders File (pst)".
Choose the folders you wish to export (NB you would normally choose the entire Personal Folders unless you only wished to export the Inbox etc) and make sure you tick "include subfolders"
Change the default save directory to something you will remember - it will default to c:\documents and settings\<your username>\local settings\application data\microsoft\outlook\backup.pst so change this to c:\backup.pst for example. Leave the option to replace duplicates as default and then click finish to start the export.
From here you can set a password if you want and any encryption but you should probably just leave the defaults and continue.
Beware that any auto-complete addresses in Outlook will not be exported, only contacts you have created. To backup the autocomplete file do a search for *.nk2 and back that up as well.
It would also be wise to also do a search for *.wab and *.pab files to backup any other contacts you have floating about. Hope that helps for future restores!
If you need to deliberately 'wipe' stuff off (and I'm not asking as to why you'd need to, but...), there are a couple of US Department of Defense (sic) - certified programmes that will do the job. Basically it just writes series of 1s and 2s all over the HD about 80 times thus covering up anything that was there. Very sophisticated software will still be able to retrieve data fragments, but if it's just being sold on or going to PC-World, it'll be more than adequate.
I think even the Lexar and Sandisk Pro cards come with something like this bundled in the package now.
I think even the Lexar and Sandisk Pro cards come with something like this bundled in the package now.
- Messages
- 3,821
- Edit My Images
- Yes
Try this if you want to clean a disk - Boot and Nuke
Allows you to create a bootable disk that you just start the machine from, confirm and it will scrub a drive to US DoD standards, will take along time though depending on the size of the disk as it makes mutliple passes.
Download
And a link to what it can do Linky
Allows you to create a bootable disk that you just start the machine from, confirm and it will scrub a drive to US DoD standards, will take along time though depending on the size of the disk as it makes mutliple passes.
Download
And a link to what it can do Linky
OP
- Messages
- 1,619
- Edit My Images
- Yes
god i would so love to do this, but i am nervous about it, there is nothing wrong with the laptop, no real reason to wipe it, but i feel that a complete wipe would make it feel fresh and new, its not like sending stuff to the recycle bin and deleting it.
Not sure how to backup stuff, or what to backup.
ok, so if i open this xp home disc and run it, what will it do, will it wipe everything off and just leave me with a clean machine, or do i have to re format first, and if so, how.
Not sure how to backup stuff, or what to backup.
ok, so if i open this xp home disc and run it, what will it do, will it wipe everything off and just leave me with a clean machine, or do i have to re format first, and if so, how.