Reformat help

[rnbv424140]

am i in the right category? haha. feel free to move it if im not. could somebody give a detailed help on what to do before reformatting, during reformatting and after reformatting. oh what tools might be handy. ive never done a reformat before haha.

[hellnoire]

Before reformating is backing up every bit of data we can, license keys, (if we have certain freebies) registry keys, etc. If I'm wiping out a computer, I can safely say that not even the darn history and favourites get left behind.

During is pretty easy. If you've got a second PC, and you're not using an OEM install, grab drivers. With that being said, also start grabbing programs for the OS too.

After is the fun part. You've got the blank slate, the control. Install drivers and programs, and watch your perfect OS go back to what it was

[mischief_ash]

Backup important stuffs like drivers and license files.

Get hold of a copy of Hiren's boot cd (life is so much easier then).

[LunarWolf]

I don't know how to backup my drivers.

I just reformat. Obviously you need a OS bootable CD. Either you buy it or you torrent it. Or you can download Ubuntu which is free.

Put the CD into the CD loader, restart your computer, keep tapping F8 or other keys on your computer which can bring up the setup screen. My computer key is F8. Each computer have different key. For booting up windows, follow the instructions given by the computer. For Ubuntu, you ask the Linux Guru. .

Tada, you have a new and clean PC. But if you didn't install any drivers, you won't get any sound. So don't panic. Look for it. That I can't help as I do not know how to install driver. If you can live without sound, then is ok.

I think that is all about it.

[mischief_ash]

You can use programs like Driver Magician to back up driver. It's as easy and click and save.

And yes, you can try Linux. Maybe then you'd never ever have to reformat your hard disk. It doesn't age like Windows does.

[LunarWolf]

1. Is driver magician free?

2. Er save to where? As the C drive will be wipe clean.

3. After finding it, hat do I do? Double click on the icon?

[mischief_ash]

Well Driver Magician is shareware. You can use double driver also. It's a freeware. You can get it at http://www.boozet.org/dd.htm

You can backup your drivers in a cd or another partition in the disk drive.
After reinstalling just install double driver and point it to the backed up files and you should be able to restore the drivers.

If this fails, you can ask windows to find the drivers from the backup. It'll will pick up the drivers itself.

[rnbv424140]

thanx. so after i backup from the driver magician then reformat i will just restore? i got my copy from giveaway of the day.

[mischief_ash]

yup. Just make sure you save it someplace else and not on the disk that you will be reformatting.

[ha14]

Well, if you have more than one disk drives so lets say first one have your os and applications, then its easy you can make easy backup of your choosen files to your secon hard drive.

If not well, then you need bootable cds to make backups, or buy an external hard drive plugg it to your usb link and make your backup so that you can recover your necessary files later.

While the easiest way is to keep the backup image on the hard drive, it is not the best way of ensuring data safety. Of course, this protects you from accidental data deletion, or losing data because of system failure, but it would not help you if something happens to the hard drive itself.

Keeping your backup image on DVDs or CDs (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW) makes you independent of any troubles with your computer. You can easily keep the backup image up-to-date with the differential backup feature.


Next as its mentioned you need probably bootable cd
http://lowendmac.com/macdan/2k0621cr.html