Complete reformat of my PC

Question

How do I clean everything off my PC and start from scratch?  My pc runs incredibly slow and I cannot seem to figure out how to reformat it and erase everything and reinstalling XP.

volcano11 · Answer

Wow I'll bet this question has never been asked thousands of times on these forums!  What do you think?   You don't say which model computer you have, but the first thing you should do is go to www.belarc.com and download and run Belarc Advisor.  This will give you a complete inventory of all devices on your computer.  Next, you should go to the Dell Tech Support link (upper left of forum Window) and download the drivers for all devices on your computer.  The Belarc Advisor output will tell which devices are installed.  Depending on which model computer you have, you should also download the Notebook System software (if you have a Notebook computer) and the Chipset Drivers.   Next, you should save the download drivers to some kind of removable media so you will have them available to install after reinstalling Windows on your machine.  Next you need to back up any important files you want to keep (things like photos, videos, spreadsheets, documents, music, email, etc.).   Once you are ready and assuming that you are going to be running Windows XP, see the following site for reinstallation instructions:   http://www.djdenham.com/Install%20Procedures.htm   Steve

ou_chot · Answer

How do set the system's CD-ROM drive as the first boot device in BIOS?

volcano11 · Answer

It would be a heck of a lot easier to tell you if you told us which model computer you have.   For most systems, restart the computer and hit the F2 key before Windows starts to load.  Each model's BIOS is different, so without knowing which model you have, we can't tell you exactly what you have to do.  You will have to find it yourself be finding the Boot menu in the BIOS setup program and moving the CD-ROM drive to the top of the boot order.   Steve

jmwills · Answer

The easier way is to hit F12 at bootup and that will give you the option to choose the first boot device, for one time only, in order to boot fromt he CD/DVD.   This keeps you out of the BIOS which appears would be a good thing to do.

epete · Answer

I am not sure if you have the answer to the question you Private Messaged me about yet.  I think my PC is stable enough to respond now.  The CD I am using is labeled Reinstallation CD Microsoft Windows XP Professional.   I installed, then ran Windows Update than tried to intstall my drivers.  This may be why I am having problems.  I will now re-format, install WinXP, update the drivers as suggested above and then run Windoes Update to bring it up to SP2.

volcano11 · Answer

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim4300s/syssetup.htm#1097056

ou_chot · Answer

I have a Dimension 4300S.

Windows General

Complete reformat of my PC

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