i want to reformat. some help please?

guitarxe

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i haven't reformatted in more than two years, and my system is bugging up and performing poorly. about a month ago, my system somehow managed to switch labels on my hardrive so that on startup it couldn't find windows on my primary, which should have been the slave.

now i decided i want to just wipe my drives completely clean (too bad i can't just swipe it with a big magnet like in the movies :D ), and start fresh, but i need some help as to how to go about doing it.

i'm not completely clueless on what to do, and i have some technical knowledge and how to use DOS to go about doing it, but perhaps there is some kind of guide somewhere that takes you through it step by step?

another concern that i have is that i have a big chunk of videos and screenshots as well as some irreplaceable old games that i want to keep, so what should i do? should i copy it to one disk, reformat, then copy it over to the clean disk and reformat the other one?

i'm also considering on buying a new hardrive that can hold some more memory (my current ones hold about 160gb total). can i uninstall windows on my old hardrive, set my new as primary, install windows on it and all the drivers and stuff and just have the others as storage? will this let me not do a reformat at all, or should i reformat the old ones anyway if i want a completely clean system?
maybe i should move what i want onto the new disk and have it as storage, and then reformat the old ones and use one of them for windows?
 

sprucebr1

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You don't need to worry about DOS. Simply use the windows install CD/DVD to format the system. be sure you know what partition is the the boot partition. Its fairly straight forward.

1) enter setup (BIOS) and make sure your set to boot from DVD-ROM etc.
2) pop in the windows install disk, and when prompted, hit enter.
3) follow the instructions, you will be able to format and partition you HDD from here.
4) by default the primary partition is C: (the boot partition).

good luck.
 

guitarxe

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uh well virus scan, i have norton running and i haven't caught anything in like.. well, ever. (i'm don't go randomly clicking links to everything on the net and opening files from sources i don't trust, i know how to avoid viruses). spam scan, well i have a scanner that i used half a year ago, and i also have a tool that tracks my registry for any changes and informs me, so im pretty sure i'm clean in that regard as well.

to summarise what i want:
1. what should i do to keep my old games and videos? (you already said that i could put them on DVD, and i think im going to do that actually)
2. how exactly should i go about reformatting? (you say that the windows install disk will give me the option to reforma my drives?)
3. should i just get a new drive and use that for windows and the drivers? in this case, will the old stuff (such as windows and drivers) conflict in any way if i put in my old drives?
 

sprucebr1

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Oh, yeah, It would be a good idea to "Back up" everything you want to keep before you format, be sure you can get everything back. A couple DVDs can do that easily.
 

sprucebr1

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You said you are worried about drivers? If you don't have the install disks for your hardware, the drivers for all of the hardware is by default found in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers. Simply back up this folder and you should be able to restore your drivers when you reinstall. either that or you'll have to visit some web sites later. good luck.
 

guitarxe

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i want the drivers deleted, so i can reinstall them again because i think i might have made a mistake somewhere last time i installed everything.
thanks for the advice, i'll just back up all the data i want using my DVD-R and use the windows disk to reformat my drives.
what was that about the boot disk? how do i know which one is which after i reformat? or will reformat also delete the boot record and then windows will let me choose which drive to put the boot on?
 

croc

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Boot off of your DOS 2.0 disk and type "debug=g800:5". Don't forget to enter your bad cylindar map from your drive's label.