Reformatting my computer - eek!

Hectic Glenn

Hectic Glenn

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Well i've decided its time to clean this thing out. Its filled with so much crap, and dodgy things which have made my 2.66ghz processor run at what feels 500mhz.

So, this is the first time, and i'm wondering if anyone has any tips to what i'll need. I don't want to miss anything or get a nasty surprise having left out some key drivers. I have a guide to do the reformat, are there any others on the net that are better?

I'm burning some dvds now, for my media (music and steam stuff), another dvd contains:

Direct X 9c, Ati catalyst drivers, sound card drivers, PCI network card drivers, printer drivers. Anything else needed? I have my windows installer disc too obviously.

I think i'm pretty geared to go ahead, but i don't wanna **** up something. So any tips/ help / other information i need to know would be GREATLY APPRECIATED! :)
 
Looks like you are more than prepared . :) When i reformat i just bust out my XP CD key and cd , ati drivers cd , and motherboard cd. '

1.Windows XP cd
2.CD key
3.Ati disc
4.motherboard disc.

As Emeril would say BAM!!!

Nobody ever showed me how to do it and i can do it anytime .Very easy to do.
 
Email? Favourites? they're the things i always forget. Oh yeh and .cfg files used by games, steam doesnt back these up so you'll lose your CS scripts and game key bindings. Thats a minor one but it saves a lot of time in the long run. Erm, any other personal files, CV, photos, MSN/mIRC logs if you're sentimental like that.
 
I remember when I formated a while back... 3DVD's were used.
 
the biggest prob i had when reformatting was my sata raid hd drivers, for some reason they didnt come with my comps backup driver cd, once i go them they were a pain in the ass to install...ugh...
 
Here's what i'd say to burn:

Latest motherboard drivers,
Latest video card drivers,
Latest sound drivers,
Latest mouse drivers (depends really),
Latest keyboard drivers (depends really),
Latest version of Direct X (optional),
The installer for your favorite anti virus application,
The installer for your favorite anti spyware application(s),
The installer for your favorite firewall,
The installer for your favorite browser,
The installer for Adobe Acrobat reader,
A copy of the Windows XP Tweaking Companion (www.tweakguides.com),
A copy of the Catalyst tweak guide or the Forceware tweak guide (www.tweakguides.com)
And all of your media.

Having all this stuff ready before hand really helps allot, and minimizes your need to connect to the internet to download things. Burning your favorite browser takes the pain off of using IE for downloading programs and such, and having all your antivirus and anti spyware apps ready before hand really minimizes your chance of infection during the early stages where you're connecting to the web for windows updates and stuff.

I'd highly reccomend using the xptc for your new install, as it shows you step by step how to tweak your new install for maximum performance.

As for the Catalyst and Forceware tweak guides, just copy and paste them into notepad (NOT a word processor) and save them as a TXT.

It might also be a good idea going through the XPTC before the reformat and dling and burning all the programs in it before hand, but by the time you hit those steps, you should have everything up and running and you should be able to connect to the internet.

And when you boot into your new install for the first time, make absolutely sure that you're not connected to the internet. If you burn all the formentioned things to a disc, there really should be no need to connect to the internet untill you are done with your install set up.

Good luck :)

EDIT: Oh yeah, make sure you have all the hdd driver floppies ready beforehand. Those could really kick you in the ass.
 
Thanks alot sinkoman, thats really good help there. A few questions.

I have no motherboard drivers cd. I've never touched my motherboard stuff. I have drivers for cards in the mobo of course, as i mentioned in the first post. Is this a cause for concern?

Those floppys you mentioned, i had no intent on using a floppy disc in this, what do i need them for specifically.

My favourite web browser is firefox, but i hear i can't get my favourites saved from there? Is this true?

Also all this tweaking stuff, i've never looked into, and seems like a good idea on this fresh start, i'll have a poke around and see what i can do. Sounds good, thanks again.
 
You can get your mobo drivers on the net.
If you have SATA drives your gonna need to put the drivers on a floppy.
False, Bookmarks, Manage bookmarks, File, Export...
Good, np.
 
Hectic Glenn said:
Thanks alot sinkoman, thats really good help there. A few questions.

I have no motherboard drivers cd. I've never touched my motherboard stuff. I have drivers for cards in the mobo of course, as i mentioned in the first post. Is this a cause for concern?

Those floppys you mentioned, i had no intent on using a floppy disc in this, what do i need them for specifically.

My favourite web browser is firefox, but i hear i can't get my favourites saved from there? Is this true?

Also all this tweaking stuff, i've never looked into, and seems like a good idea on this fresh start, i'll have a poke around and see what i can do. Sounds good, thanks again.
Click to expand...

The motherboard drivers may not be a concern. It really depends on what type of install you're doing. Some PC manufactureres just put enough stuff on their install cd's to wipe all of your old stuff off, install windows, and then put back your mobo drivers and all the programs your PC came preloaded with. Some just make a FAT32 partition on your hdd and save all vital windows stuff there, so when you pop in the install cd's, it just nabs stuff off the the partition.

I would say to find out what motherboard you have using a program like SiSandra, and then burning the motherboard files to it just for safety. It wouldnt hurt having a more up to date set anyway.

These files are needed if you want to use chipset things like your motherboard's NIC (ethernet ports) and AGP ports. What you're really going to end up doing though, even if you visit the motherboard webpage, is dling the CHIPSET drivers for your motherboard. Chipsets are made by different companies than the motherboard manufacturer, so make sure to get your CHIPSET drivers.

The floppies i'm speaking if are for your SATA RAID drivers. They may not be needed for every windows reformat, but it'd be a good idea to have them ready anyway. You'd get the files neede for these from your motherboard manufacturers website (not the chipset manufacturers) and then save them to a floppy. Usually it's just a single EXE or other type of file. If you're using an IDE harddrive, then you don't have to worry about this step.

In Firefox, you CAN get your favorites and settings out. They're saved in html files. Check out the Firefox tweak guide at www.tweakguides.com for more info on how to save all your ff settings and favorites.

Goodluck :thumbs:
 
Right, im trying to keep up here, its hard, i don't know my technical stuff as deep as this!

My sister has a similar computer to me, and all she did was format, then reinstall windows and she was fine. All this motherboard driver talk etc is confusing me. I have a dell computer but i've changed things on it. e.g. added AGP graphics card, changed optical drive to a dvd-rw, added a PCI network card for example.

I have that SIsandra program already, i don't know anything about mobo's i'll be honest, what am i looking for on my system information. It says bus : X-Bus AGP PCI IMB USB i2c/SMBus, is that my motherboard? i know it may sound silly but im totally uneducated on them. Unless it was called a 'fati1ity' or something hehe. If you could instruct me where i could find that information so i can find my mobo drivers that would be great. And also explain why i must do this extra stuff, when i've seen it done before without these processes

(off to bed now, ill check back in a few hours) Any other details welcomed :)
 
Ok. Don't worry about any motherboard whoozits and any floppy whoozats, ignore those things. You'll be just fine.

The things I posted are generally what you would do if you had built your pc and bought your copy of windows, but you don't have to worry about all those things. Dell has all those motherboard drivers and such already on the cd.

So yeah. The other stuff I posted is just to make the install as easy and as virus free as possible. The tweaking isn't necessary, but really gives you a big performance boost.

So as I said, just ignore any motherboard driver bussiness in the xptc or that I mentioned, forget about SATA, and just do what your sister did, supplemented with a bit of HL2.net :thumbs:
 
service pack 2(if you're using xp)

it should be the first thing you install after you first get into windows, and then all the security hotfixes up to current.
 
Yeah i was thinking about that too, i have XP SP1, and thought this would be a good time to changed to SP2 for security reasons. One main reason i'm formatting is because i've had problems with trojans recently, and i can't seem to shift them with any trojan killer things. I'm getting norton AV 2005 today too, my 2004 one has run out, i want to be careful!

Ok cheers, i won't bother with the mobo driver things, i have quite alot of discs with stuff on. I'm just unsure on the chronology of installing things? Windows first, then SP2? or graphical drivers, sound card drivers etc?

I'll catch up with you later Hal, cheers
 
I would do graphics first, then service pack 2, then sound card.
Another few essentials to have are:
DivX http://www.divx.com/
AC3 Audio Codec http://ac3filter.sourceforge.net/
Daemon tools www.daemon-tools.cc
Avast antivirus, which is free, www.avast.com , however youv already bought one
Memory Clearer AnalogueX maxmemi available from www.majorgeeks.com
CPU-Z http://www.cpuid.org/cpuz.php
MBM 5 http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

These are files I would burn to a CD when I am doing a reformat, in addition tothe other essential drivers (Catalyst, AC97 driver, WLAN card etc, DX9 can always com off a game CD)

Since you are reformatting, you might also want to consider layout different partitions for your system, ie something like 1GB for your page file, another 8GB for Windows, and the rest for everything else. Its up to you.

Good luck
 
Do i really need all those things? These especially.
Memory Clearer AnalogueX maxmemi available from www.majorgeeks.com
CPU-Z http://www.cpuid.org/cpuz.php
MBM 5 http://mbm.livewiredev.com/

I have alot of programs im going to need on disc already, that will help me enjoy using my pc if you get me...its just the basic foundation things which i need to get me up and going. Thanks for reminding me about DivX though, forgot about that!

*Hunts around for SP2 download*
 
They were basically what I would always have, thought you might benefit from it.

Don't forget to "backup game files" on steam, saves you endless hours of gettin ready to play CSS/HL2 after a fresh install.

Forgetting DivX would be a disaster :o just aswell we remembered ;)
 
I know you already did the format, but just FYI, having a seperate partition for your pagefile can slow down your system.

I'd say try to keep everything in one partition.

But what's done is done I guess.
 
sinkoman said:
I know you already did the format, but just FYI, having a seperate partition for your pagefile can slow down your system.
Click to expand...

Really?

Everywhre else I read, it said it improves performance, especially of its at the start / end of the drive or something.

Havin it in its own partition helps prevent it from fragging up.
And yes, I do set a fixed size.
 
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