Formatting Hard Drive?

[minimax]

Can anyone point me in the direction of a step by step guide to formatting ones hard drive? I have been informed that the reason my PC is performing atrociously slowly is because in all the 3 years I've had it I have never formatted it...

anyone?


Thanks

[FourWheelDrift]

It would have to have been formatted for you to install the operating systems, whoever said that is talking bollox.

Run scan disc, then defrag (from the accessories/ststem tools menu).

That might help things go quicker, then virus check, ad-aware & Spyware check too.

[minimax]

thanks for the reply FWD - I dunno cos this friend says he frequently formats and re-installs all his photos & applications/software... I have already defragged, although I did get the virus a while ago that caused a problem with the RPC...name escapes me...and I'm not entirely sure I ever did eradicate it properly - come to think of it, the slowness has been getting worse since then.

>> Edited by minimax on Tuesday 10th February 18:21

[greenv8s]

Easy peasy, you can probably do it with fdisk. No doubt it will come up with all sorts of warnings about 'you are about to erase all your data, are you sure?', 'are you REALLY sure?', 'look I'm not kidding you're really about to lose the whole lot are you REALLY REALLY SURE?' and so on, just keep hitting OK and bingo one nice blank formatted disk, should be lovely and fast. Oh sorry, did you want your PC to still work afterwards? That's a bit harder!

[ErnestM]

Minimax -

1. Formatting your hard drive removes everything. If you are unfamilar with loading an OS, I would not recommend the procedure.

2. Hard drives (especially IDE drives) do not last forever - so back up the stuff you don't want to lose (pictures, videos to CD-ROM etc)


ErnestM

[minimax]

ErnestM said:

Minimax - 1. Formatting your hard drive removes everything. If you are unfamilar with loading an OS, I would not recommend the procedure. 2. Hard drives (especially IDE drives) do not last forever - so back up the stuff you don't want to lose (pictures, videos to CD-ROM etc) ErnestM

good advice I'm going to do that right now...cannot imagine why I haven't done it before! thanks

[WildfireS3]

FourWheelDrift said:

It would have to have been formatted for you to install the operating systems, whoever said that is talking bollox. Run scan disc, then defrag (from the accessories/ststem tools menu). That might help things go quicker, then virus check, ad-aware & Spyware check too.

I think he means that the OS is going slowly and that the HDD should be Formatted and Re Installed. Not that the HDD has never been formatted.

[slinksport]

Try using the likes of disk cleanup as well, also..
Check your internet settings, remove all of the old cr4p and make sure that your cache is set to well under 100Mb.. (ie 10!)

If you've got more than 256Mb of RAM consider enabling conservative swap file use..

As has already been mentioned, run ad-aware (www.lavasoft.de) defrag, etc etc etc..

Drop me a line if you're still having probs..

HTH,

W

[Rob P]

minimax said:

ErnestM said: Minimax - 1. Formatting your hard drive removes everything. If you are unfamilar with loading an OS, I would not recommend the procedure. 2. Hard drives (especially IDE drives) do not last forever - so back up the stuff you don't want to lose (pictures, videos to CD-ROM etc) ErnestM good advice I'm going to do that right now...cannot imagine why I haven't done it before! thanks

I dont want all those vidoes you have saved being deleted! 2 years of personal motoring history IMO