My pc has been being really buggy and somewhat a pain lately. My internet explorer is corrupt too. So I've been thinking about just reformatting the whole thing when I get back to school. I can take everything off and then just put it back on. For anyone who has reformatted can you give me any pointers? All the software that my computer had when I first booted it up should be packaged with the instruction manual and everything, right? I really don't have much new stuff on my computer that I want to keep, and what I do need I can just easily burn onto a cd-rw. So, can anyone out there help me with what to do? Also, if anyone has a dell: my pc is a dell and came with Microsoft word, createCD burner software, etc already installed...when I reboot my computer will all the software that came on the computer be on the cd that I re-intstall my pc with?
whatever was on your pc when you bought it will be there when you reformat. and when you reformat don't stray to far from your pc. at some point it's gonna ask you do change disks. at least mine does.
I had a similar problem a few weeks ago and got some help on this bbs. Before you reformat everything, try re-installing windows from the CD....(I had a dell too with the same situation as you re: software). To do this, press F2 while booting up when you first turn it on and alter your boot sequence, make sure it boots up your CD/DVD-ROM drive first, and tell it not to boot up your hard disk. Then tell it to reset and start up again, make sure the Windows installation CD is in, and follow the instructions. I did this and my computer runs quicker than ever....Much easier than reformatting.
It's not neccessarily F2, the exact key is determined by the motherboard that you have, but if you push all the F-keys (continuiosly) at startup you should get to the BIOS screen where you can change the the boot sequence. I think that some mb's use the DELETE key, so push everything at startup untill it brings you to the BIOS screen. ...But chances are that with a Dell you just need to insert the CD and follow the screen (no need to change boot sequence.
I read somewhere that when you do this you have an option of erasing (reformating?) the contents of the disc drive and repartitioning the drive in combination with re-installing windows. How'd everything work out with you as far as software goes? Did you ever full reformat or did you just re-install windows while keeping all the software you originally had on the drive intact? Do you know if the Dell reboot cd's come with all the original factory installed software? It would be a pain to not have some of that crucial software. I'd like to just start from scratch, but it is crucial that I have the software that I started with when I first took the laptop out of the box and turned it on.
It works fine...everything that was on my HD before (except for all the windows updates) was still there after the re-installation. I actually don't know if the Dell reboot CD's come with the software...I don't think they do. The CD itself comes in the windows package and jsut says "Windows XP installation CD" or something like that so I really didn't want to take the chance, you know? You actually don't have to do it the way I told you to do it, you can jsut pop in the re-install CD and you can re-install while actually in XP, but mine wouldn't work as my computer was so fried that it couldn't even boot up the reinstall program, hence I had to do it via the boot up method described above. Also, try using the System Restore command. It didn't work for me but it works for some people.
The Dell system restoration CD should put your computer back to exactly the configuration when you pulled it out of the box. It is a good last resort option. It erases everything and reinstalls. The only pain is you have to load all software that you installed on it, return all your data files, reload Winodws updates and recustomize all your personalized settings (which always annoys everybody). TIP: You might want to save your Internet cookies (if you don't keep track of passwords) and Favorites. From IE, goto File/Export and save it to a file. After reformatting, do the same in reverse. This is the most often overlooked thing for people.
