In my last post about how to fix a slow computer I have had some people that would like a more detailed descriptions on how to reinstall Windows and reformat their hard drive. Reformatting your hard drive is the quickest and surest way to fix a slow computer that was once faster. It can also fix a lot of computer problems and wipe out all viruses, spyware, and adware.

Follow up:

If you are new to reformatting your hard drive listen carefully. We need to locate a few CDs. First locate your Windows OS CD (vista or xp) then locate your drivers CD. The driver CD contains all of the software components that tell Windows how to run your hardware correctly. It should be labeled "Drivers CD". If you cannot locate it then go to the website of the brand of your computer and go to support and click on drivers. In here, you will choose your computer model and download the drivers for it. Burn these files to a CD or a thumb drive.

If you have a SATA drive you may need to get a floppy drive and a floppy disk and put the SATA driver on it. While installing XP press F6 to install the driver during the blue and gray screen. This is probably the hardest part but I don't think you will have to worry about it if you install using windows vista because XP came out before SATA hard drives.

Now that you have located your CDs, we need to consider one last thing. Did you back up your important files? Go through your computer... check My Pictures, My Documents, Music and Videos. Also back up program files that you need. Anything that you will miss needs to be backed up on a CD or thumb drive.

Once you have backed up all your files restart your computer and keep pressing F1 and/or DEL keys while in the BIOS (The black and white text you see when your computer first starts up). You will be taken to a menu. Not all BIOS menus are the same. So look for something that says boot or boot sequence. Now set your CD drive to the first boot device. The reason we do this is so the computer will identify the CD first rather than the Hard Drive so we can reformat and install windows or any other IBM compatible operating system for that matter such as Linux.

Once we set the first boot device to the CD-ROM we need to save and exit the BIOS menu. Doing so will restart the computer. Wait until you see the text "Press any key to boot from CD..." press a key as it says and windows will being to load its files for installation. If you are installing XP and have a SATA drive you should press F6. You will need a floppy drive and a floppy disk with the SATA drivers.

Once loaded you should see something like this:

Now press enter to continue.

You should see something like this now.

To reformat you need to create a partition over the installed space on the Hard Drive so press C. You can set how much space in megabytes will be partitioned but by defalt it should select the entire hard drive. Choose to reformat your hard drive with NTFS (quick).

Once done, you can reboot your computer.

Then next time the computer says "Press any key to boot CD..." Don't do it. If you do you will just go through the same process again. Now if you wait long enough windows will begin to install. Everything from there on is very simple to fallow.

Once windows is isntalled you can go back into your BIOS menu settings and set the first boot device back to the hard drive and the second boot device to the CD.

Now you will need to install the drivers for your computer so that your hardware works correctly. This means your drivers for your video card, sound card, and network driver. If you are unsure how to get your drivers and you do not have a driver CD call tech support of your computer's brand and they will give you further instructions on locating drivers. But they should be available on their website.

This concludes the reforamatting of the PC. If you feel that you need more detain on this visit this website: Clean Install of Windows XP

Or look for a video on Youtube that will give you good instructions on how to reformat your hard drive.

Related Questions:

How do I reformat my hard drive?
How do I install windows XP?
How can I fix my slow computer and eliminate viruses?