Reformat

you can do it yourself its easy

here is a walk thru for you.

after install you will need to install your drivers for the parts in your pc, like chipset, video card and etc., you have the cd for those I'm sure, start by installing your chipset first then video card and then everything else for best results.

have any questions ask.

but I like to advise you to not reinstall you have nothing to gain at all really, the difference is only in your head.


lol just realized I never asked you do have xp right

Edited by DST4ME - 14 Apr 2008 at 7:27pm

Well to be honest Bill, I don't think I've gotten any viruses or anything like that. I'm running avast! and Windows Defender and I think I've been fairly careful about what sites I visit, etc.
"If you've never installed Windows on a computer, it is a right of passage that will leave you feeling more in control of you computing destiny."
I have not installed Windows on a computer before so it would be new to me haha. Yes, I'm aware that it will clear everything (pretty much why I'm doing it lol). I'm also fully aware that I'll have to re-DL all my Steam games, find all my FireFox add-ons again, etc.
I'm still thinking about it because again, I really have pretty much no reason to do it. I just feel really compelled to for some odd reason. I'm really a clean freak and I know that I've DL'ed large files such as game demos, only to delete them after like 10 minutes cuz I got bored with them. Now, that prolly has no effect on anything, but there's like this voice in the back of my head saying, "All those things you delete leave traces, and those traces are going to add up wasting space!" It's just stuff like that that's being the motivation to reinstall Windows. I seriously think I have OCD 

Edited by Nomad - 14 Apr 2008 at 7:55pm

Originally posted by DST4ME ok I feel like a complete idiot for not reading your sig sorry here is the walk thru for vista

Haha no it's cool man! Don't worry about it!



Edited by Nomad - 14 Apr 2008 at 7:57pm

It really is redundant to reinstall your OS if all you're wanting to do is clean out your registry and disk of trash and clutter.  I mean, you can do it that way and "gitter done", but why?

I would recommend using a registry cleaner and a PC cleaner program on occasions.  I've been using RegVac and A1 Ultra PC Cleaner for years now and they have served me well.  I ran A1 Ultra on my wife's computer the other day after not having run it for about a year and it literally removed 6gigs of trash out of her registry and hard disk... 6GIGS!  It ran all day long, starting at around 10:30 in the morning, all the way to almost 10:00 that night removing and deleting the issues.  Her OS, WXP, runs much faster now because of that.  Hers was an extreme because she's retired and shops and searches on the computer all freaking day long.  Most of the trash that was removed was internet cache and temp files.

Now, you may be a Rainman and count every key stroke and do back door division, and in that case you'll probably need to reformat every 6 months or you may have a seizure.  However, I wouldn't reformat unless you really need to.   

Duke I'm not sure what you are doing on your PC that it needs that kind of a cleaning every 6 month but I test software and even my PC does not need that after all the install and uninstall for testing I do.

as mentioned CCleaner does a great job of cleaning crap and it has a registry cleaner I like and its does a great job too.

but if you really need to install every 6 month then I think that vmware is probably the best bet for somebody who needs to reinstall often, its much easier to setup and restore.

also again if you need to install that often why not do a fresh install, then copy that install to an external and then every-time you wanna refresh install just copy back the fresh install from the external drive, it will get you a fresh copy with all drivers installed and all in a matter of 2 minutes. you can clone your drive with acronis or most HDD makes have their own software seagate for example has maxtorblast

Duke I alwasy say to each man his own, so if that is what you like to do more power to you and I hope some of my ideas will make that go faster and easier for you.



Edited by DST4ME - 14 Apr 2008 at 11:47pm

lol that I can understand my only problem is that I have so many apps and things are so configed that it takes me a long time to put all apps back the way they were.

so I clone my drive once a week, so if anything goes wrong I just copy the clone back and keep going like nothing ever happened

I can't wait to get a workstation with water cooling from you guys, the only problem is that I'm waiting for nehalem , can't wait, can't wait I tell you lol

Actually, I have a friend who does the same thing as DST4ME.  He has an external housing that he has 3 drives he swaps out.  One is nearby, one is the current image, and one he puts in his bank drawer.  And once a week he takes one out of his machine, take it to the bank and swap it with the one that's there.  The becomes the next backup.  He also has incremental backups he does between.   He's told of stories where he's massively corrupted his OS by playing with something and has been able to put it back to what he had previously within a short amount of time.

are there any decent freeware hd cloners?

ive got a 250 gb external id love to use

Originally posted by DST4ME who makes your HDD?

western digital, though i searched and they dont seem to have a utility that is specifically designed for ghosting or cloning, much less one that works on vista.

really id like a freeware solution if available. ill look into it and post what i find as well.


Edited by bucephalusbaghdad - 15 Apr 2008 at 10:39pm

you must be some kind of superpowered reading magician

oh thank god you told me that, horrible things were going to happen. horrible things.

(not sarcastic)


Edited by bucephalusbaghdad - 16 Apr 2008 at 1:14am

I use acronis also but imaging you need acronis installed to recongnise it.

clonnig is much better, works everytime (if somebody does not know how to install a clone let me know) and you don't need anything installed to view it.

imaging actually is more risky then clonning, I have never had a problem with cloning and I have used DLT, MaxtorBlast with no problems.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that a clone will destroy your system.

no matter what you use you can't install a clone on a different machine due to hardware and driver issues. I can be done but you can't take a HDD from one machine and stick in a whole different machine without few hours of extra work. clone or not.

I have not seen any difference what so ever in making a clone is acroinis,DLT or MaxtorBlast and I have tested these myself.

fyi, I have never had a clone fail me.