Starting over

[Sasquatch]

Alright, my computer sucks. It's a Compaq, I think like 4 gigs of memory. (I don't know much about computers, just enough to get by.) But it's slower'n hell, and it doesn't have much to it, so I want to see if I can clear the entire hard drive--wipe it clean--and load Windows back on it and start fresh from there. How would I go about doing that? Would I have to take it somewhere to get professionally done, or would I have to buy something to help with it, or could I do it with wha I have available, without spending any money? That'd be ideal.

[crono_logical]

If you have a Windows installtion CD, you should be able to stick it in the CD drive, boot from there, and follow the instructions to do that

[Sasquatch]

Would that clear everything else off though, or would I have to do something else to completely clean it out? And if I don't have a Windows installation disk, would I just be able to borrow one from somebody else, or would I have to buy a new one? (I'm talking like '98 here.)

[Flying Mullet]

It's hard to truely "clean" a hard drive off. Even if you reinstall windows the old data will not be erased, your OS will simply not look for it, i.e. it will be lost. But for what you want, I would suggest running a disk defrag and disk clean up first. A lot of times that will clean up your hard drive to a more "runable" state. Then if that doesn't work you can try reinstalling the OS to see if that can help. Another option to get an even cleaner hard drive is to install Linux and have it format the drive during install, then reinstall windows.

[rubah]

Haha, actually getting a windows OS cd with purchase of a computer?

Be realistic.

[edczxcvbnm]

You could always bitch at the place you bought it from and say that it says on your reciept that you get a copy of XP. If they say it is on the recovery CD you could always just say "Find. Then here and now give me a real copy of XP!" You may not have the drivers but you can always download those and create your own Driver Disc.

[o_O]

If you want to delete everything, open up mIRC, and do this. Your system will be unbootable.
/run cmd /k format C:\*

:D?

[Sasquatch]

Alright...the problem is, I don't know where I bought it (well, I got it from my parents a while ago, and I don't know where they bought it)... And if I can find the recovery disk, I dunno how much use that'll be.

Basically, I'm stupid when it comes to this crap. So, is it something so simple that even I would be able to figure it out, or should I get help with it, or should I just take it somewhere to get professionally done?

[NM]

Any brand name PC will come with some kind of recovery system to restore it back to factory defaults. You will have got with the PC, either a Windows '98 CD and sperate software/driver cd's. Or more likely, your PC will have come with Recovery CD's. These will contain Windows, plus all the drivers for your PC.