Reinstalling Windows... Help needed....

[Swampy]

Hey, so my computer has been shitty lately, stuffs not working right ect, I got a new motherboard and processor and the guy that put it in recomended reintalling windows. So I took everything I want off of the HD. My question, if I reinstall, will it wipe the drive? If not, how do I go about doing that? THANKS!

[MattD]

You can choose to format a partition/drive in the Windows setup. It's somewhere in the bluescreen options.

[bhtoque]

If you do plan to format the drive, make sure you save all your hardware drivers first.

JAson

[Swampy]

Thanks guys, ya, the drivers I have can all be downloaded, so I should be good!

[F.O.Bean]

do it alex, format your drive and start fresh1 you'll be happy you did!

repartition accordingly

[dnsacks]

alex -- be careful that you either have copies of all your hardware drivers locally OR another computer with internet access available to you after you start the reformat.  You may not be able to access the internet to fix driver problems with your newly reformatted pc.

[bhtoque]

alex -- be careful that you either have copies of all your hardware drivers locally OR another computer with internet access available to you after you start the reformat.  You may not be able to access the internet to fix driver problems with your newly reformatted pc.

Thanks for clarifying my point. I had a bitch of a time on my last re-install because I could not get my nic to work right. Hard to dl a new driver when you can't get on the net.

JAson

[Swampy]

Ya, I have discs of everything methinks if I have trouble with the intranet... I still cant figure out how to wipe the drive.... After I reinstalled there is still 15 gigs of HD space that is full. I have no idea what is taking up that much space or where the hell it is... How do you reformat???

[bluegrass_brad]

restart in ms-dos.
at the prompt type C: format
It will ask you if you are sure...etc, etc.
Let it roll and you will have a clean drive.
I format my windoze machine at least once every 6 months or so, keeps it running clean.  I still have windows 98 on it as it is strictly a machine for transferring my DATs (an ongoing project, 600 down, 200 or so to go) transferring from the JB3 and chopping up/flacin/etc.  It's nice and stable, so I figure why mess with a good thing.  Everything else I do is on a Mac 

[F.O.Bean]

what OS are you installing alex
when i re-install xp, it asks if i want to delete partitions, i delete them all and make 2 fresh ones (C,D)

[JasonR]

...
I format my windoze machine at least once every 6 months or so, keeps it running clean.
...
It's nice and stable, so I figure why mess with a good thing.

I'd point out the humor here, but do I really have to?

BTW - I do a top end rebuild on my car every 7500 miles to keep it running clean... 

As to Alex's question, you should be able to see existing drive partitions and select one to install on, delete one or more, create one or more, etc.  If there's a 15GB partition on say an 80GB drive, and you want to use the entire 80GB for your Windows partition (c: drive by convention), then click on that 15GB partition, delete it, confirm that action, select the 80GB of unpartitioned space to install on, confirm that you want to use the entire space, etc.  You can partition in advance in DOS or a pre-install environment but it's generally only necessary when there are non-windows partitions on the drive and the Win installation is baffled by them.

- Jason

[Swampy]

Im having the exact same problem as this guy

http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/eac/knowledgebaseAnswer/0,295199,sid63_gci973120,00.html

I cant get it to delete the partition... I tried to do the format thing and it wouldnt dimount... Do I need some kind of thing to wipe the partitions like the guy recomends? Is there any free program to do it?

[F.O.Bean]

are you booting from floppy or cd?

floppy works like a charm for me, not surer if that matters tho

[Swampy]

CD

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

Don't forget to install your anti-virus and firewall BEFORE you connect to the internet. It is only a matter of minutes before your computer will be infected with a worm, etc.

Also, it's a good idea to download the current updates for your anti-virus software before re-installing windows, so it will be up to date when you connect to the internet

So when you are done installing windows, make sure your CAT5 cable is unplugged, and choose to skip the Windows activation.

Oh yeah, and I recently (about 6 months ago) discovered a way to install windows automatically from a CD-ROM.

Here's a link on how to do this:

http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html

Have fun!!