how to reformat and reinstall Vista 64 on a pc that had Vista 64 preinstalled

[blackjack]

Hi peeps, I have a friend who bought a computer made to his spec that came with Vista 64 preinstaled, he has 4g of ram as he is a heavy gamer and into video editing, last night his Sata 2 hardrive packed in (so he thinks) and so he has been having problems booting windows, he has tried to repair it with the Vista CD and it says it can not as it cant find the OS, so he has been tying to reformat his hdd just to elimanate anything else, anyway, he has gone to the menu and can not find how to reformat his drive, he has tried for hours and still no joy, also he seems to think that when you start from scratch with Vista 64 you need a pre install package from MS first, is this correct? can anyone leave me a guide on how to reformat his drive and how to reinstall Vista 64, I am a XP man so have only tinkled with Vista occasionaly so feel im out of my depth on this one, ive looked online but it doesnt really help me that much.

 

[jmacavali]

As far as I know, you just put in the OS disk, boot off it and go like you do with XP....I'm not aware of anything special but I'm not 100%.

 

[Russel1]

To perform a clean install of Vista, boot the computer from the Vista installation DVD and follow the instructions. When the installation software asks what partition to install the operating system on, choose advanced option (If I remember correctly) and delete the original partition, or partitions. Then create a new partition and choose it for the installation location. (It has been a while since the last time I've installed Vista, but I think you can choose the un-partitioned space and the installation software will take care of the rest. So, it may not be necessary to create a partition.)

If at all possible, have all of the hardware drivers handy. At the very least you should have the LAN drivers so that you can download any other drivers as needed.

 

[pcgeek2471]

Russel is right its simple