I'd like some help with my computer. I'm sure all you pc savvy guys will have no problem with this. I want to completely restore my pc back to it's original manufacterer's setting. basically, wipe everything out and have it just as if i took it out of the box. The OS is windows XP home edition. on my first computer, which used windows 98, all i had to do was stick my restore disk in and reset the computer and the process began by itself. for the life of me though, i can't figure out how to totally reformat xp. i've googled it a few times and it seems all they talk about is restore points. the only disks i have are the 5 recovery CDs that xp said i should make. nothing else came in the box. if you're wondering why i want to do this. well, it seems some type of driver keeps resetting my pc. at least that's what microsoft says when i send the error report. sometimes, i'll go a couple of days and nothing happens. other times, within an hour of turnign it on, it'll just reboot all of a sudden and just keep rebooting. i'd have to turn it off and wait an hour before i can access my desktop normally.
I did this last summer. do a search for "XP clean install". I found: http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/honeycutt_02october07.mspx make sure everything is backed up the you want to keep.
Just pop in your XP cd, set the cd drive as a bootable device in the bios, and away you go. Once you get into the setup program there will be options to format your drive and reinstall the os.
Trust me. The time between you turn you computer off and turn it back on again has 100% percent nothing to do with it. Your computers not sitting there with a stop watch going "not yet... still not... ok NOW ill work". If its drivers, just find out what drivers are conflecting or not working by going into Control Panel - device manager and see if it tells you anything is conflecting. However this is from a 98/2000 user so Im not positive it still works like that in XP but im sure it does EDIT:record for most edits in one post in about 20 sec time span goes to me with 4
dont you mean the 5 boot disks(diskettes)? IF you dont have a self booting cd of XP(or the manufacturer's recovery disk)...you can boot up from the floppy drive and it will start the install that way. What manufacturer is the computer from? and is the cd marked as a recovery disk or is it just your normal XP disk?
I just did this about 3 weeks ago, man. I had so much crap that needed to go. I am also enjoying a new Seagate harddrive.
I haven't heard much about the new Seagates, which model did you get? I know the WD Raptors are all the rage right now. I bought a Seagate Baracuda a few years ago and within a little over a year it died. Hopefully they are better these days.
Do you know which driver is causing the problem? If so, roll back the driver and/or update the driver from within "Device Manager." Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager. Right click on the device, select Properties, then Driver, and choose either Update Driver or Roll Back Driver.
they're not diskettes. they're CDs that I used to do the back up that was recommended. I don't have a booting CD of XP. just those 5 i mentioned previously. the manufacturer is Compaq or HP, i suppose. and i have no idea which driver it is. and after checking the device manager, none of the drivers are in conflict.
