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How do I reformat my computer?

sorgoth

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Aug 9, 2002
Messages
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I know a bit about computers, enough to fix most problems when they appear, but should I call in someone who really knows what they're doing to reformat my computer (It's been a b!t(h lately) rather than find a site on the internet that explains how to do it?

How DO you reformat a computer, anyway?
 
Well the easiest way is if your PC came with a recovery disk which traditionally doesn't prompt you - the bass tones of the disk head make a charming counterpoint to the owners shrill screams. You do mean that you want to wipe your hard disk completely and start again don't you? Lose all your data and have a clean start?
 
Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Everything worked before, doesn't work now. I figure, go back to square one, it should work again.
 
sorgoth said:
Yes, that is exactly what I mean. Everything worked before, doesn't work now. I figure, go back to square one, it should work again.
Click to expand...

Assuming you've got a PC, you can try this:

Create a bootable floppy by running "sys" on it (i.e. type "sys a:" at a command prompt). Then copy "format.com" from your windows\system32 directory onto it.

Boot to the floppy.

type:

format c:

and respond appropriately to any prompts. That should do the trick.

Edited to add: Before you go to all that trouble, you might want to see if you can format the c: drive from within Windows. I'm inclined to think that it won't let you - you'll excuse me if I don't try it on my machine first :D
 
First make sure that you have install CDs for everything. *everything* you need to get back on the net - so make sure that any updated drivers for your modem or anything else are available as well. Assuming you use Windows - check Add/remove Programs in the control panel and make sure that any software you really need is sitting right there on your desk.
 
You really want to use fdisk with the /mbr switch to start.

Search the Microsoft website for installing your particular version of Windows. They will have very detailed articles on what you want to do.
 
What OS (or flavor of Windows) are you running? The 95-98-ME family is prone to instability, more than the NT-2K-XP variety.

In any case, you should try to figure out what went wrong with your current install to try to have it more robust the next time out. Do you like to install beta versions of software, download apps from spam sites, swap hardware and drivers?

You might also have a boatload of spyware running on your machine now, you may want to check and see first. If so, try to take steps to prevent/clean the system in its next install or it's likely it will be corrupted again. It's also possible that just cleaning up your present system will help it run well enough again to be satisfactory.

Good luck!
 
How DO you reformat a computer, anyway?
Click to expand...


Call your computer tech support. Wait. Spend twenty minutes trying to read off a service tag or some such nonsense to a person who doesn't understand your accent. Finally, s/he'll ask you what's wrong, but you won't understand his/her accent. Hang up. Repeat until you get an understandable accent. From there it's relatively easy going.


I've been checking out the Dell forums recently and a bunch of people are using Hijackthis and posting the results there for folks to examine and tell them what crap may be infesting their computers. If gary's right about spyware you may want to give that a shot.
 
I always figure that reformatting your machine when you have problems is a little like scrapping your car and getting a new one because there's a funny noise coming from the engine. If there's a problem with your machine, fix the problem. Reformatting is what's known as a workaround, or "coward's way out".

That said, some people actually believe in reformatting and starting from scratch once a year or more. Some people have way too much time on their hands.

My hard drive failed twice this year, and I've had to reload from scratch each time (I had backups of important stuff.) I can't imagine doing it by choice.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Oh, and as for reformatting it, boot from the OS installation CD, and do a full disk format as part of the installation.

An hour later, remember that really important folder that you forgot to backup.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
bulldozer.jpg
 
sorgoth said:
How DO you reformat a computer, anyway?
Click to expand...
When I got my computer (Win98), it came with a boot CD. All I had to do was back up everything I wanted to keep on a CD ROM, pop the boot CD in and presto! Whole new copy of Windows.

Reformatting Windows wont restore your computer back to new. I've had problems that dont go away even after reformatting.
 
Reformatting will fix any problems unless you have hardware issues. Reinstalling Windows won't fix everything, certainly.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Of course, reformatting may create some new ones- like where did you put the drivers for your hardware and the upgrade packs for Windows XP? Backed up in your C:\Windows folder, right?

Ooops!
 
Here's my checklist for re-doing a computer:

1. Backup what's there. Most users don't even know what "back up" means. If you can't boot the computer, consider buying a new hard disk to install the OS onto. You can mount the old hard disk afterwards and copy data from it.

2. Collect all the driver disks, install packages, etc. you can find and have them ready. You should have invested in a BOX or drawer specifically to keep it all in.

3. Partition the hard disk. Run FDISK (or equivalent) and make yourself a "boot" partition, and a "data" partition. C: and D:, as a minimum. This will save your butt later. About 25% for C:, 75% for D:.

Powerquest PartitionMagic and DriveImage are my preferred disk management and backup solutions. More on these later.

4. Install your OS to the "boot" partition (or drive). Feed it all the drivers it needs. Get it up and running.

5. BACK UP THE BOOT PARTITION. DriveImage (or equivalent software) will back your boot drive to another partition or another hard disk. SAVE what you have done now.

6. Install all the other junk. Take special care to ensure your "My Documents" (or home) folder, and other work, download, etc. folders is on the OTHER (D:) partition or physical volume from the booting one. Spend hours and hours, then days and days on this. If you screw it up, just restore to the point where the OS was fresh and start over. When you are happy with what you have...

7. BACK UP THE BOOT PARTITION. DriveImage (or equivalent software) will back your boot drive to another partition or another hard disk. SAVE what you have done now. A different file name.

8. Your computer is "good to go". You should invest in a USB2 or Firewire hard disk to perform backups of your work to.

9. When you make important or significant changes to the OS, back it up again. That USB drive is also very good for backing up those drive images of the the boot partition. A complete system backup takes about 5 minutes for me to USB HDD.

10. When something goes "horribly wrong", restore the backed up boot partition image over the top of Windows. If you've been keeping up your incremental backups, and boot image backups, you will not have lost anything significant. The next round of recovery when windows melts down will take *five minutes* because you planned ahead. It will literally be easier to overwrite your boot partition than to figure out what broke.
 
I've been doing more or less what evildave said for may years, until a surge from the power supply destroyed all my peripherals. Second partition, second hard drive, and ups didn't help at all, as you can imagine. Fortunately I had another PC and most of my data backuped, but I still lost a lot of things. So, since then, I keep a few backup directories in my hard disk, which I transfer to CDs/DVDs whenever I feel that there's a lot of new content in them. The main backup directory has everything I need to configure a system from scratch: My e-mail folders, IE favorites, passwords, installation keys, programming projects, saved games, latest drivers, etc. It also has all basic utilities I need to install, and a checklist of steps to follow. The checklist is really detailed to the point that it becomes a no-brainer. Whenever I download a new driver I'll store it in that directory. Games are configured to save in this directory. Any useful utility will go there; its settings too, if they are complicated.

Ever since I do this, I don't worry about anything going wrong. I don't care about hard disk failure, windows collapses or viruses. I have even uninstalled the antivirus and the firewall (I still know very well what I'm downloading and opening). Using these backups I have setup everything from scratch several times (like when I change hard disk) and it is really easy.
 
Yeah, I used to do the CD/DVD thing more, but the external USB/Firewire drive (that's OFF and unplugged when not in use) does great. I have big CD cake boxes with CD backups going back to 1996.

This version of backup mirrors my important and critical bits to the hard disk for convenient recovery....
Code: 
@echo off
set xflags=/MIR /xo /R:0 
set dst=i:
set backup=%dst%\Backup
set recover=%dst%\Recover
robocopy %xflags% "D:\Games" %backup%\Games
robocopy %xflags% "D:\Mail" %backup%\Mail
robocopy %xflags% "D:\My Documents" "%backup%\My Documents"
robocopy %xflags% "D:\VMWare" %backup%\VMWare
robocopy %xflags% "D:\Work" %backup%\Work
robocopy %xflags% "D:\Jakks" %backup%\Jakks
robocopy %xflags% "E:\CD-IMAGE" %backup%\CD-IMAGE
robocopy %xflags% "E:\Download" %backup%\Download
robocopy %xflags% "E:\Movies" %backup%\Movies
robocopy %xflags% "E:\Music" %backup%\Music
robocopy %xflags% "E:\Perforce" %backup%\Perforce
robocopy %xflags% "F:\OldWork" %backup%\OldWork
xcopy /h /e /r /d /i /c /k /y "F:\Recover" %recover%
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Config" %recover%\Config
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Documents and Settings\evildave" "%recover%\evildave"

'Robocopy' is a microsoft tool you can get from their web site as part of one of their Resource Kit packages. You could use xcopy instead (as I do in certain areas) where you want to pile up (not automatically delete) old files.

The mirror backup takes literally five minutes, unless I modify huge files or make big changes. The big bonus for that is I do the mirror back up much more often.

Reviewing it, I need a bigger backup drive and two alternate versions of the backup, really. One that does the XCOPY and one that does the Robocopy MIRROR copy that deletes files it found deleted on the source. That way, I won't up and "lose" things, yet I'll still be able to have that instantaneous recovery of everything just the way it was, just the way I prefer.
 
And here's my backup script of important information for reference, not much different to yours eh Dave?

Code: 
@echo off
set xflags=/MIR /xo /R:0 
set dst=i:
set backup=%dst%\Backup
set recover=%dst%\Recover
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\Softcore" %backup%\Porn\Softcore
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\Hardcore" %backup%\Porn\Hardcore
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\PrinceCharles" %backup%\Porn\PrinceCharles
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\QueenMother" %backup%\Porn\QueenMother
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\Corgis" %backup%\Porn\Corgis
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\Donkeys" %backup%\Porn\Donkeys
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\DwarfsWithGoats\Angora" %backup%\Porn\DwarfsWithGoats\Angora
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\DwarfsWithGoats\Saanen" %backup%\Porn\DwarfsWithGoats\Saanen
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\SallyJesseRaphael" %backup%\Porn\SallyJesseRaphael
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\RushLimbaugh" %backup%\Porn\RushLimbaugh
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\OutdoorFurniture\Timber" %backup%\Porn\OutdoorFurniture\Timber
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Porn\OutdoorFurniture\PVC" %backup%\Porn\OutdoorFurniture\PVC
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Config" %recover%\Config
robocopy %xflags% "C:\Documents and Settings\Iconoclast" "%recover%\Iconoclast"
 
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