I give up, How do I format?

netwhizkid

For anyone who has read my problems here you will know that I have had my fair share of trouble with Windows this last while.

If anybody good link me to a good guide on what I hope to achieve below I'd be most grateful.

Having downloaded just about everything in Aidan Walshe’s Sig,(and others) I still haven’t resolved the issue. I plan to format the drive ie. Just simply wipe the thing clean. I have two partions in my HD (160Gig)

Local Disk ( C: ) contains everything of use including, All my personal documents and the Windows Components etc. Local Disk ( C: ) is 58.5GB

New Volume ( F: ) is 90.4GB (There is ten gigs missing but I’m not stuck for room)

I had the PC formatted on the 19th of May last year as it was infected with an unknown virus which the rudimentary Dell Mcaffe Security left in with ease.

Anyway, I wonder is it possible to format Local Disk ( C: ) and leave New Volume ( F: ) alone as I have about 25Gigs of DVDs backed up on there. ? All the problems are on Local Disk ( C: ) so if I could obliterate those files and work from there then.

I have all my disks and the other default stuff that came with it from Dell so that isn’t a problem. The only problem I can see happening with it is I have Microsoft Office 2000 installed on the System which does not belong to me. If I backed up the MS Office Program Files would I then be able to use it after formatting? I use MS Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint all of which are very important to all of my family who uses the PC.

I have a DVD Burner and will be backing up all my files before formatting. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this but it has only been one problem after another with about the last two months and I have grown to loathe the machine. Add to this my sister who is in her final year of College has some important projects to undertake soon, I really need to make sure every thing is hunky dory. I am not even going to consider ringing Dell considering the appalling way they have treated me in the past.

Every thing was fine until the PC stopped shutting down, and unusually it seems to only happen when I have connected to the Net during my session logged in. Does turning off a PC by holding the Switch pressed for 5 seconds or pulling the plug do much harm as this is how I have had to turn it off for the last while and infinitely into the future until I format. I got a professional to it last time round, But I can’t be arsed the hassle as he takes too long. He took a week last time round.

Ideally I'd love to leave out Internet Explorer completly as it is the whole cause of nearly every problem that has arisen since I last formatted. I know it is a intrical part of the OS so that isn't possible still I wish I could


Any help would be greatly appreciated for a first time formatter!

Creamy Goodness

stick in your xp cd, go to your bios and change the boot priority so that the CD drive is first to boot from..

follow the instructions...

but make sure when it comes to formatting that you only select C:\ to be formatted.

that will leave F: or whatever else untouched.

ChityWest

netwhizkid wrote:

Does turning off a PC by holding the Switch pressed for 5 seconds or pulling the plug do much harm as this is how I have had to turn it off for the last while and infinitely into the future until I format.

This wont do your hard drive any favours but as a short term thing I wouldnt worry about it. You do need to get it sorted one way or the other though. Cremo's instructions should see you right. If there is anything on the system you cant live without - then make a copy first.

stepbar

Have u tried windows update for a IE security update first b4 u format? Think I had a prob like this yrs ago

Lump

What's the problem then? .... oh right, you linked it.

John

andy1249

The lads above have given you instructions for formatting , so follow that , when you are back up and running then download and install firefox ,then search for internet explorer.exe and rename it , say to internet explorer.bak , and leave it like that , then no one will be able to fire up internet explorer without a file not found error ,
IE is about the most brutal program in existence for filling up your PC with dangerous crap. I had so many problems with it until I switched over to firefox , firefox is by no means ideal , but its streets ahead of explorer.

By the way , the missing 10 gigs is due to the differences in the way hard drive capacities are reported by windows and by vendors ,windows reports in base 2 which means powers of 2 ( without boring your this is the way it should be done , a kilobyte is this instance is 1024 bytes ) , whereas vendors have taken to reporting capacity with a kilobyte meaning 1000 bytes , as computers work in binary essentially , windows is correct and the vendors are lying. But anyway thats really OT.

Good luck ,and dont give up , this is all learning.

astrofool

you won't be able to backup office 2000, you'll need the original disk and key to install it. You can find out your current key using a product like RockXP (google it), this will also tell you your XP product code.

Really what you should do here first is post what your computer's hardware is, so people here can get the latest drivers for each thing for you.

Then backup your documents, and downloaded stuff to the other partition.

Its very rare you'll be able to bring a program over, so just reinstall them, also for the sake of keeping the computer working correctly.

Also, make sure everything important is backed up to another location in case something goes wrong, then when installing Windows XP, format the C: drive and install windows onto it through the XP installer. The way to do this will probably be to delete the partition, and then create a new one, this should also get back any missing space for you, and ensures the C: drive is 100% clean.

Once done, get the network driver installed and immediately update the machine to service pack 2 if its not done already. You can download the service pack 2 file from microsoft, its about 200 megs.

After that install all the microsoft updates though http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate (this one will also update office for you). After Windows is as secure as it gets by default, then start installing all the drivers for the gfx/sound/motherboard, and install anti virus such as AVG (I see you're using norton in screenshots, which is probably a little heavy going), also install ad-aware, do an update/scan and spybot and download all updates, immunise and scan.

Then move onto the rest of your programs, such as firefox, office, games etc.

netwhizkid

Hi Fellas,

Thanks for all the great advice. I formatted the Machine today, All went well and I have just spent the last 7hours at it and have it fully restored to the way I had it before minus a few things like Norton AV. I must say it was a long affair and not one I would like to repeat again for a long time.

I have one unresolved issue still.

Always before when I would have the dial-up connected and when I would go to switch user,( There being two user names, Myself and my sisters).

The dial-up cuts off when I switch user's. As of before I formatted it would stay going and I would be offered a choice to disconnect the connection or
or stay connected when I would reach the login windows welcome screen.

Before I had a password on my profile, I don't have a password on it now and there is no password on either profile yet. Any body have any ideas on how to stop the connection from dropping when I log off or switch users. ?

Once again thanks for all the help fellas,

I really appreciate it.

Someone mentioned Norton Ghost in a different post, can anyone explain what it is or how it actually works?

Creamy Goodness

well it'd be too late to use norton ghost as you've already formatted.

basically norton ghost takes an exact image of your hard drive which you can then restore at a later point if/when you wish.

Karoma

About time. That's sure to get rid of Sub7 for ya.

http://www.toejumper.net/speed5/pass5.htm wrote:

If you find that FUS disconnects you from your dial-up connection, you'll need to use Internet Connection Sharing to stay online. Go through Control Panel's Network Connections applet, select the connection you want to share, and click on "Change settings of this connection" in the left-hand pane. On the Advanced tab, check the boxes "Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection" and "Establish a dial-up connection whenever a computer on my network attempts to access the Internet." Now the computer will stay open through a Fast User Switch. Broadband users, this won't affect you.

................mneh!

irlrobins

Cremo wrote:

well it'd be too late to use norton ghost as you've already formatted.

basically norton ghost takes an exact image of your hard drive which you can then restore at a later point if/when you wish.

Anyway useless in this case as it is pointless in taking an image of a setup that itsn't working. When you reapply the image u'd be back at square one.

You could do an image now of your clean setup and keep that in case you need to go through this again.

And NWK, BUY Norton Ghost if you're going to use it. Not you like your illegal copy of Office. Pirate. And for someone who rants on about how microsoft is shit I'm surprised you even have it installed and not using OpenOffice instead.

netwhizkid

Karoma wrote:

About time. That's sure to get rid of Sub7 for ya.


................mneh!

Thanks for that Karoma it did the trick

irlrobins wrote:

Anyway useless in this case as it is pointless in taking an image of a set-up that itsn't working. When you reapply the image u'd be back at square one.

You could do an image now of your clean set-up and keep that in case you need to go through this again.

And NWK, BUY Norton Ghost if you're going to use it. Not you like your illegal copy of Office. Pirate. And for someone who rants on about how Microsoft is **** I'm surprised you even have it installed and not using OpenOffice instead.

Yeah I am on the look out for Norton Ghost. I will probably end up buying it off the Internet. However sourcing MS office 2000 seems a bit hard as most people use Office 2003. I rather Office 2000 as the Microsoft Photo Editor is the simplest photo device ever and I use for nearly everything up until I wiped it of that is. Any Ideas where to get Office 2000?

Are open office documents compatible with MS office documents as if they are I might use that.

Also every time I go to start-up Internet Explorer I get the message in the attachment below. This only seems to have happened since yesterday as I went into Windows Update and updated it however the stupid Update is stuck on 8% as it was before formatting despite I leaving the PC on the Internet all night. It installed 3 updates after I restated it this morning but it still says it is updating. Am I in trouble??