help me erase my computer

[october]

I have a computer that is cluttered up with junk and incomplete uninstalls that have gone bad and left shadows of old programs and games on my hard drive. I would like to wipe the hard drive clean and start over like it's a brand new drive, so I can reinstall these things that the computer thinks is already there.

See what I did was uninstall some things, but the uninstall went bad and now the game is gone but it's still there in the add/remove programs list, and the computer won't let me reinstall it because it thinks it's installed. If I wipe my computer clean, it'll be like starting with it new.

How do I do it? Is it as simple as format c: and then booting up with the windows CD? Is it bad for the hard drive to do what I want to do?

 

[Turner]

If you have a system restore disk that would be best. You can do a destructive rebuild (it's probably called that) and it will format the hard drive and return the system to the state it was in when you first got it. This will erase everything, so backup whatever you want saved.

G'luck.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

Before you format, try defragmenting the drive and run something like Regclean. Its free and its put out by Microsoft:

http://download.com.com/3000-2094-881470.html?tag=list

After doing these things, you might find you dont have to format after all.

 

[Speedo]

Go to the website for your HDD. They should have some program that you can use through a boot disk to do a full low level format. That wipes everything on the drive, partitions and all.

 

[Lucky]

Originally posted by october
How do I do it? Is it as simple as format c: and then booting up with the windows CD? Is it bad for the hard drive to do what I want to do?

1. Yes, it can be as simple as that. If you want to totally erase all the data, i.e. make it unrecoverable (well, at least to normal people), you need to make a multi-pass low-level format, something you need a special program for.
But I doubt you need to that, a simple format c: should work fine in every case

1.a) Your BIOS needs to support CD booting of course, if not you need to create a floppy bootdisk before you start.
Also, with bigger drives you should think about using several partitions. Use FDISK to partition your harddrive, then you need to format each drive. Windows Setup should do that for you though.

2. No, it´s far from being bad to your HD. In fact, formatting once in a while and regularly running a defrag program is the best you can do for your harddrive.
Excessive swapping due to fragmentation is causing increased heat and increased mechanical wear, which leads to an increased number of bad sectors and ultimately to failure of your HD.
So formatting, installing all the programs anew, defragging and remembering to defrag once in a while especially after excessive downloading or installation/uninstallation is generally more of a good treatment for your HD.

 

[Turner]

Originally posted by Speedo
Go to the website for your HDD. They should have some program that you can use through a boot disk to do a full low level format. That wipes everything on the drive, partitions and all.

Wiping out the partitions when reinstalling does the same thing. Or so the two network admins here told me when I was looking for a low level format boot disk.

After trying it, I have found that that works pretty good, too. Plus LLFing takes A LONG time. . .

 

[Titi]

If you only need to remove wrong keys in the registry, try this .

When your registry is clean, you just have to delete the directories left by the bad install/uninstall.

 

[nihilistic]

Originally posted by Titi
If you only need to remove wrong keys in the registry, try this .

When your registry is clean, you just have to delete the directories left by the bad install/uninstall.

If he has trouble formatting and reinstaling OSes, I don't think it's a good idea to recommending registry editing.


october-
Tell us what version of windows you wish to install first. If you can determine your system specs, post them as well.

 

[october]

I already sucessfully wiped my hard drive and reinstalled Windows 98. All is well now. Thanks for the help.