starting from scratch

[e55exboi]

I wont mind if no one can be bothered to reply to this but on the off chance someone might, can they tell me how to reinstall my entire computer? Is formatting required? What order everything is done in? Ive got a windows xp recovery cd but do you need a fuller version? Do u begin with uninstallation of things etc?

[tophatter]

When i had to do this because my computer crashed completley I just stuck the recovery disk in and it installed everything and it basically made my computer start up like it did the day I bought it. Took a few hours to do though

[mathare]

It would help a little to know more about the PC.

Did you buy it off the shelf or is it a self-build? I assume the former, that's more usual. In which case you should have instructions to restore the PC to it's factory default state ie the state in which it arrived on your doorstep.

I suspect this starts with the XP recovery CD. I'm guessing a little here as the procedures vary slightly from machine to machine but you probably need to do something along these lines:
1) Boot from XP recovery CD
2) Follow the prompts that come up, selecting to format the drive if you want that
3) Wait for XP to install
4) Insert any other CDs it asks for along the way, such as driver CDs etc.
5) Reinstall applications you installed after getting the system (Office, Panda etc).
6) Update Windows with SP2 and patches

Your XP recovery CD may in fact be a full system recovery CD in which case any applications that were shipped with the PC may also be installed from that CD as part of the recovery process.

Of course you should make sure you have all your data backed up before doing any of this :)

Why do you want to do it anyway Boi? If you suspect you have screwed up Windows or something the recovery CD may offer a repair option rather than may be better than a full re-install.

[e55exboi]

Well it's mainly for a friend really. Ive got all the original stuff it's an off the shelf Mesh so il look in the book :geek Thanks

[tophatter]

yeah you could always do a system restore instead if it is a recent change to your settings you want to reverse

[e55exboi]

System restore turned off for some of my programs that require it