Wipeing my harddrive

[thompy]

I want to wipe my hard drive clean and then reinstall everything but I'm a little unsure how to go about it. If someone could please tell me how they would do it or point me in the right direction that would be great. Thanks

 

[CompMan]

Well depends what OS you want to install.

For example if you want to install Windows XP.

You restart your computer with the CD in the CD drive, and go into the bios and make sure your cd drive is the first one set to boot.

Then save settings and restart, when the text comes up saying "Press any key to boot from CD...", press any key on your keyboard.

Let the Windows XP installer go through its process and follow the on-screen instructions.

If you need any further help let us know.

EDIT: btw Welcome to the forums.

 

[thompy]

Thanks I will give it a try

 

[Rudster8161]

make sure to back up all your imporant things. formatting will cause you to loose ALL your data

 

[ssc456]

also make sure u can get hold of your drivers before your reformat aswell or you might end up with no sound or something similar

 

[Jesusfrk611]

also make sure u can get hold of your drivers before your reformat aswell or you might end up with no sound or something similar

I get drivers after I reformat usually and it works just as good... You just look up the model number of the devices. Granted, I don't look it up on the PC that has no drivers...that would be annoying in a low resolution with bad color.

 

[Raffaz]

I personally think its better to have all the drivers ready. Alot of people only have one pc, so they cant access the net after a clean install, because they are missing their NIC drivers. If you have more than one computer, then its not a problem tho.

Ooooooo, 6k lol

 

[Jesusfrk611]

I personally think its better to have all the drivers ready. Alot of people only have one pc, so they cant access the net after a clean install, because they are missing their NIC drivers. If you have more than one computer, then its not a problem tho.

Ooooooo, 6k lol

Yeah, true if you've only got 1 PC, but I think most people now have at least 2 PCs in the house, if not more... In the case that they only have 1 PC and forget to get a driver before hand, I'm sure thy know someone else with internet access, and USB flash drives are cheap now so you can transport the drivers from one PC to the other with that.

 

[ssc456]

yh i ment really double check you can get hold of your drivers as my laptop that i dual booted with xp and vista i cant find my drivers n e where for xp.

so i got no wireless no sound or n e thing on my xp boot.

so if i had reformated and installed xp id be pretty screwed even if i had a second pc then that wouldnt of helped just make sure you can get hold of them and as raffaz said it is a good idea to have them b 4 u reformat.

but just making sure u can get them at all is always a good idea

 

[Thelis]

Yeah what the people said about drivers applies very much.

As for wiping the HD, most OSs offer a full partition of the entire HD, so you do not need to worry about wiping it before. Just boot from disk, and when the partitioner comes up just select use entire disk or something like that.