Format your hard drive

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If you use your computer long enough, then it’s bound to become fairly sluggish after a while.

More often than not, sluggish responses from your computer can be solved by a myriad of ways, the most extreme of which is formatting it.

But if you’ve exhausted all other options, then formatting your PC might be the only answer left to you. Here’s how with Windows XP…

The preparation steps:

1. Send your wife/hubby and kids away for the weekend, because you’re going to need a lot of time to reinstall all your software and your frustration levels might become very high.
2. Rent a couple of good movies and have them on standby for the long downloading periods you’re going to have to sit through while installing all the updates for Windows XP.
3. Make yourself a cup of coffee, do a couple of push-ups and take a seat in front of your PC.
4. Now, backup all your files onto CD’s/DVD’s.
5. Once you’re sure you’ve backed up all your files, take a deep breath and move on to the formatting steps.

Time for Destruction Derby:

1. Insert your Windows XP installation disc in your CD Rom drive, and reboot.
2. A message will appear asking you whether you want to repair your existing installation. Press Esc to skip this option.
3. Select the current partition upon which Windows is installed and press “D” to delete it. Press “L” to confirm deletion. Repeat this step until all your partitions are deleted (unless you want to keep some of them).
4. You now have to create a new partition. Select the unpartitioned space and press “C” to create a new partition.
5. Type in the size of the partition you would like to use (in megabytes) and press “ENTER”. If you want to use all of the available disc space for the partition, then just press “ENTER”.
6. Select your partition and press “ENTER”.
7. Now choose the format option you want to use. If you’re not sure, use the ‘quick format’ NTFS option.
8. Take a sip of that coffee you made and wait for the format process to finish.
9. When it’s finished, follow the onscreen instructions to re-install Windows XP.
10. Go make yourself another cup of coffee while you wait for the setup to finish.
11. After Windows XP has been installed, it’s now time to reinstall all your software and download all the Windows updates. Watch a couple of movies while you wait.

And that’s it! Easy as pie… well, sort of…

(For more comprehensive information, please visit Microsoft’s help centre. For information on how to go back to Windows XP after having upgraded to Windows Vista, click here.)

USER COMMENTS »

Yeah and then afterward spend lots of $$$ on a techie cause you don’t know where all the drivers for your motherboard is and now you don’t have sound or the right video drivers.. PJN

How can you even publish this??

The ave user will not be able to format the hd and re-install all programs. . jc

whahahahhahahahaha

This is a joke rite?. Thea

Dumbest iafrica article ever

Ever. Most be a slow news day.
‘Go make yourself another cup of coffee…’. For Christ sake.
. Alistair

Average user

Following the instructions ,the average user should be able to do it. It was done with a sarcastic tone, but it is all in good fun. Also, the user will not really need to have all his drivers handy immediately, as that is what the internet is for. You would be surprised how good XP is at finding the required drivers if you let it do an online search…
Also, the only way to learn to do something like this, is by trying. What a better way to get more people educated…
Give it a go people. If you feel uncertain, get a technical friend or acquaintance to sit with you, but you have to do it. They can just help you when you are unsure of something to do… Then, in future you can do it all yourself.
In time, you will be able to do a full fledged format / reinstall in under 3 hours, barring off course all the windows updates to be downloaded… For that, download the XP Service Pack 3, write to disc and save yourself the time when you need to do it again. Microsoft website has everything you may need . Jan

ave user

I have done it and yeah ….didnt have all the drivers …lmao….it’s a learning curve and yip …u need plenty of patience and ja …. it did end up with an IT techie …. who was damn greatfull cause he needed the bucs and …. IT WAS FUN and now it is fixed and FASTER than before.

This was really silly!

Backing up a 200Gb hard to drive to DVD’s is going to take a week! The BEST advice is buy a new HD and install XP on that first! THEN copy all the stuff and programs. 0/10 for this article.. freddie

SLUG-ish computer

why not use OPENSOURCE instead of WHINEDOZZZZZe. Annie Mouse

If they’re going to go this far, may as well try Ubuntu

XP reinstalls are horrific, nothing ever quite comes back “the same”, not to mention the dozen reboots or more while you’re installing all your old drivers/software back in.
May as well take the plunge if you can and move away from Windows into the realm of Ubuntu-linux, at least there you don’t get charged $$$ for an office suite and your browser isn’t constant nightmare of standards incompliance and for ever under attack.
It installs easier too.
(I whole-heartedly agree that sometimes there are apps that you cannot leave behind – though there’s vmware, VirtualBox and Win4LinPro for that).
. PD

Dont forget the taken for granted ‘things’

Although I agree with many of the comments, dont be too harsh… Ive formatted many of my own PC’s dating back to Windows 95. All I can say is dont forget the ‘taken for granted things’.
1. When backing up, HDD recommended, think of everything. Browser Bookmarks, e-mails, desktop items are the classics most people forget.
2. Make sure you have all the original disks of software you had. (you be surprised how much you installed on your PC once its blank)
3. Always have a spare internet ready PC at hand. Something ALWAYS goes ‘wrong’ and often you need to google it or find the files. Nothing worse than realizing you cant get the info when you need it.
- Seb . Sebby

format c: /s

A better solution is to install Linux – dual boot – so that the noobs can get used to being fatman-free – with time you will begin to wonder why you didnt do this a long time back. Try PCLOS – its the easiest to install & configure
…Jack
http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_ionFiles&func=download&Itemid=36. Jack