Formatting and reinstalling Windows XP

MT

Hi, four years ago I bought a cheap, second-hand 2004 Dell Optiplex. I’m not particularly tech savvy and have an, er, incorrigible tendency to ignore problems as they develop.

The upshot of this is that the OS is now riddled with glitches and the thing’s picked up more viruses than you’d find at an Amsterdam brothel owners convention. I’m sure never ‘getting round to’ updating antivirus software has had a large part to play in all this.

So now I’m thinking of pressing the nuclear button and doing a complete format and reinstallation of Windows XP. However, before I do so I think there are some glaringly obvious questions I should ask:

i. How unearth do you do this? Are there any websites that provide something like a step by step guide for this procedure?

ii. What are the chances of a novice and total format virgin accomplishing this?

iii. The shop that sold me the Dell – through ebay – are posting me copies of Windows XP and things called the ‘drivers’; the machine came with everything installed and no actual disks. Given that the Product Key is stuck on the side of the machine, is this all I’ll need to be getting on with?

iv. I’ve read that, given the prospect of glitches and failures, partitions are used on many hard drives to keep the OS and everything else separate. How do you create these?

v. I only use the computer for browsing, emails and a bit of word processing so I don’t have much in the way of software installed that I’m concerned about losing. Of course, I will have to reinstall Microsoft Office but are there any essential programs I’ve overlooked as they tend to be taken for granted?

vi. If this all goes wrong I presume I can take the thing into a computer repair shop and get them to undo the damage? Or can you do irreversible harm if you make a hash of this?

Damo123

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSJTgvet9QY

muggyog

Your also going to need a XP install disk. If you format you will lose all your installed software.