<p>I have alot of crap and viruses on my computer and want to reformat it. I tried searching google but I couldnt find a tutorial of reformatting my computer and windows xp. does anyone know a site with a reformatting windows xp tutorial? thanks!</p>
<p>uh, it's not that complicated...</p>
<p>If you have the WindowsXP cd, then you insert it, boot from CD, and chose to Install Windows - then choose to reformat partition. Should take 1 - 4 hrs depending on the speed of your comp/size of your hd</p>
<p>It depends on teh computer you have, some computer have the reformat system stored on a special portion of the hard drive......</p>
<p>But those computers would have a special "reformat disk" that you should use. If you have a Windows XP disk, all you need to do is what sonataX said - put the disk in the drive and restart your computer. When the black "boot screens" are going by, keep your eyes out for a message that says something to the effect of "press space to boot from disk" or something like that. When you see that, press the spacebar (or whatever key it says), and then follow the directions to reformat. XP makes it really easy. A lot of the options it will give you don't matter much (i.e. quick format vs. full, etc)</p>
<p>in all of the computers i've had, there's an option where you could restore the computer to factory settings, essentially erasing and reformating the computer to its original settings. it's quite easy actually but it really depends if your computer has this. check your manual or the online on how to do this. good luck!</p>
<p>If you reformmat, you might not be able to get rid of all the viruses.</p>
<p>Does reformating delete all information--including Word doc., music files, etc.?</p>
<p>
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If you reformmat, you might not be able to get rid of all the viruses.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And how would that be possible? Unless you don't format all of your partitions. For example if you have viruses in D and you format C but you don't format D.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Does reformating delete all information--including Word doc., music files, etc.?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, it deletes everything, so you should reinstall your Windows, and every program you've had before the formating... So before formating C make a backup of all the files you need on D</p>
<p>I believe some viruses are capable of lurking in the HD so reformatting does nothing to kill them. And I am pretty sure of this.</p>
<p>B_B, that woud be referred to a virus that says in the bios. Bios viruses are so rare, that the chances of that are near impossible.</p>
<p>A virus is unable to remain in the HD when you format it.</p>
<p>And as for the bios just take off the cmos battery and everything will be ok</p>
<p>hi..i just found the time to start reformmating windows xp. i am on the screen where it asks if u want to partition or unpartition.i dont know which one to choose but what i want is to have all my files, programs, songs, texts, movies,etc... to be deleted. so should i choose partition or unpartition...if unpartition should i choose the one with the more megabytes or the one with the less?? thanks (ps i am on another computer...not the one i am formatting)</p>
<p>do not partition. partition means if you want to split up your HD, this is often used by some pros to have two seperate hds,</p>
<p>DO NOT.</p>
<p>so which "unpartition" do i use? the one that says :</p>
<p>unpartitioned space 47 mb</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>unpartitioned space 3593 mb</p>
<p>thanks!</p>
<p>you should choose to use the larger one 3593. this will effectively format it.</p>
<p>so i reformated my computer and everything was going well for a week until the computer started going really and i mean REALLY slowly. so i did spybot and adware several times a day but it said there were no viruses. then i looked deeper and saw that they were skipping over programs such as DyFuca, wwwInternet.Search,
Internet Spy etc... and noticed that the anti-viruses were not catching and deleting these programs. so i would like to know how to delete these programs? do i need to reformat AGAIN? or is there a special way to get them off my computer? thanks!</p>
<p>
[quote]
in all of the computers i've had, there's an option where you could restore the computer to factory settings, essentially erasing and reformating the computer to its original settings.
[/quote]
I had the same problem when I idiotically clicked on a virus link. It happened a couple of days before the new year started, but I set everything back to October 26(?), 2005, because I was positive that there were no viruses back then. If you can, reset it again - when you reset, you can keep your My Documents (or whatever files you use to save documents for school & other misc. items) untouched by not resetting that file. I used System Restore Hardware, and it gives you that option.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Does reformating delete all information--including Word doc., music files, etc.?
[/quote]
Yes, but there is a way to prevent this, as I have stated earlier. It's best to backup everything, though (better safe than sorry).</p>