Quick Guide To Formatting Your Pc

[velma 6]

 

Your computer is made up of several important parts, one of them being your hard disk. The hard disk is the device where all your files are methodically stored so that it can be fetched quickly & easily whenever you need it.

 

It also stores your "Operating System" ; Windows 7 , Windows XP , Windows 95 - 98 , Ubuntu, Linux Mint, OS X , Solaris and so on are all Operating Systems. Operating Systems help you manage your computer's resources and mainly help you use your computer. Imagine using Xisto without all those buttons and options **phew**

 

Your hard disk however does not merely store your data, it also stores information about your data, software you add(install) , little tid bits that help the software work… many many things are stored onto your hard disk to make sure your experience is as great as it can be.

 

As your hard disk ages without regular maintenance, you might face any 1 of many problems including :-

Infections in your computer that affect performance, memory & security.

Your machine feels sluggish and difficult to use.

Unnecessary tid bits , records are lying around cluttering up space and other resources

So, users often format their computers regularly to "wipe the slate clean" so to speak.

 

What is formatting?

 

Remember how I said your files are stored methodically? Hard disks don't automatically know how to do this. Formatting is the process where your hard disk is first wiped clean of all previous records. Wiped clean = all data on it is deleted and once completed , a "file system" (the structure that will help your computer store files properly / organized) is added.

 

Now, your hard disk is ready for use where you can add the operating system of your choice.

 

STEP 1 :- GETTING STARTED - KNOW YOUR COMPUTER

 

Software that will help you with this

Ccleaner

Speccy

-- Catalogue / List all the programs you have installed on your computer --

List of Software.

List of passwords.

Browser History (optional)

List of hardware components on your computer.

- Getting a list of Software

 

-- The painful part of formatting your computer is setting up your computer to its old working state. Without a list, you are looking at a very painstaking process because you are left wondering which software you have with you or software that you would still like to use. I usually end up discarding 5-15 applications during this process, things I add which I would have forgotten to remove or postponed the uninstallation.

 

- How to get a List of software added by you

-- We will be using a software called Ccleaner, the download link has been given above (To those unsure on how to install, Click No to any downloads / free toolbars.. Click Next for everything else)

 

-- After installation, run the program by double clicking the program icon. Navigate to the Tools -> Uninstall Section . Here , you will find all the software you have installed on your computer.

 

Through windows you would Start -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs (Uninstall a Program for Windows 7)

 

- List of saved Passwords

 

-- If you have a habit of using the "save Password" "Remember Password" feature of your browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Maxthon, Opera, Safari & so on) . Here are a few softwares that can help you export your stored passwords

 

Firefox - Password Exporter

Multi Browser Support(Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Opera.)

- WebBrowserPassView

 

Optionally you can also save your history in case there are links you need. BrowsingHistoryView (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer & Safari)

 

 

- List of hardware components & their drivers

 

-- Like your hard disk, your other components also require some help in order to function properly. These programs are called "drivers" they help operate your all hardware including your mouse, keyboard, motherboard and so on.

 

-- It is always recommended that you directly download these drivers from the maker's website since the driver version on your CD would probably be outdated. Also, download before the format in case your internet does not work after the formatting (It usually does not since the "Network drivers" are missing)

 

-- To get your computer's complete system information, we are going to use "Speccy" . There is another one called Belarc Advisor but I prefer Speccy since it is pretty easy to understand

 

-- Install and run the software, note down the Motherboard, Graphics & Audio model names / numbers. Graphics & Audio model name / numbers show only if you have an external card installed. Most commonly, if you search this number in google with the word driver, you will get links from where you can download these drivers. Something like "XYZ Model Number 2343453 driver"

 

STEP 2 :- BACKING UP YOUR FILES

 

Firstly, let us remember that the C drive on Windows is only for Windows and not for data storage, if you have so far been using it for storing data, make sure to not use it for storing software, files and so on. If you are using programs like Photoshop, your brushes and so on will have to be copied by you.

 

Personally, I back up my files by hand picking the files I need to make sure I copy only the files I recognize. Ccleaner has a duplicate file finder in case you want to make sure your computer is not filled with copies of the same stuff

 

For those looking for a quick and automated back up process, you can do it using AOMEI DATA BACKUPPER . It allows you to backup either the complete hard disk or simply the partitions that need backing up. I like this tool because it offers Incremental backups and restoration options.

 

STEP 3 :- FORMATING THE HARD DISK

 

When upgrading to Windows 7 , you need to remember that your previous version of Windows is stored in a folder of its own. It might be useful to others but I find this to be pointless, I prefer having everything erased off the hard disk before installing a new operating system on it. With older versions of Windows, you can format the hard disk

 

OR

 

You can use DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke) . DBAN wil delete EVERYTHING from your Hard Disk for good. You need to first download the software and then add (burn) it onto a CD using CDBurnerXP . Please use only CDBurnerXP since the developer of DBAN has recommended this.

 

STEP 4 :- POP IN YOUR WINDOWS CD AND TWIDDLE THUMBS UNTIL DONE

 

STEP 5 :- REINSTALL DRIVERS , SOFTWARES AND BACKUPS

 

I wrote this article for those attempting their first format I tried as much as I could to keep it as novice friendly as I could.. If you have questions, shoot away

 

Source:- http://forums.xisto.com/topic/78826-quick-guide-to-formatting-your-pc/

'>http://forums.xisto.com/topic/78826-quick-guide-to-formatting-your-pc/

[yordan 10]

Thanks for the link, Velma.

I love the "list your installed software" part, I would never have though using the "remove software" from ccleaner in order to find the list of the software installed.

One thing is missing, and I find it very important.

When you start from scratch, I recommend starting from a very clean professional state. I mean, you should have your operating system and your data in separate spaces.

So, during the "Step 4:- Pop in your windows CD" I would recommend, do not use the whole hard drive for Windows, use a small part of the drive for the operating system (XP can survive with as few as 4 gigs, and Windows 7 can survive with 60 gigs), so create a c: disk for Windows and an D: disk for data.

Then, in case of big problem (Windows bad update or destructive virus) you can re-install windowss on the C: disk without loosing your data which are still unouched on the d: disk.

And of course, in case of operating system problems you will not have to re-install from scracth if you have a system backup available. And a system backup is smaller the system disk to be backed up has only the system, no pictures and no movies. So you can make every month a system backup, in case of crash simply restore it it will not touch your data.

And of course, do not forget to frequenly back up your own data on a regular basis using an external disk, or a previously old internal disk plugged on a disk docking usb device

[velma 6]

Yeah, I find it sad that people will often store data in the boot drive. Since my article talks about using the backup tool which basically creates an image of your drives, what it would do is restore the drive as it is.

 

Which means that people would have to simply sort their files before the backup. However, if someone does make the mistake of adding everything in the C drive. You always have the option of using a software like AOMEI Partition Assistant . This is mainly for people who need a simple visual editor for managing their drives. Shrink, merge, format, clone, and delete drives.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Very detailed information really, but somehow I feel that most of it is either not necessary or not used much in common practice or may its just because of the way I am used to using my computer.

 

The common practice for me (and most likely for most of the people) is that the hard drive has many partitoins (for me its 3: C, D and E). The operating system is installed in C. The installation directories of other software are also placed in C. So basically C is the partition containing the Operating system and other commonly used software. D and E on the other hand are more like backup and storage drives. All of my music, movies, picutres etc are here (And I think that it is a common practive nowadays). Furthermore, other necessary files that I need on my hard drive on permenant basis, like documents, my website related stuff, ebooks, and backups of software setups etc are also on these partitions. I even go a step further by changing the settings of my office applicaitons, download managers, photo editors so that the default location for saving files is not in C but in either D or E. This way, I am sure that I don't have anything on C that I need on permenant basis.

 

So what I am really trying to say is that most people are used to stroring their files in such a way. And with the advancement in cloud computing technologies, the overall thing has gone a step further. So problems like losing files is becoming less and less common. Especially when the problem is operating system failure... I would like to mention here that hard drive failure still poses a huge threat to losing important data.

 

So if someone stores files on his computer in a way described above (with I assume that a lot of people do), they don't need to worry much when going for a fresh install of the operating system. They just need to quickly go through common places like Desktop, Downloads (the default donload location of windows is in C), and Documents (the default location to save documents is also in C) and check for any files that they might need in the future. Just copy the files to D or E etc.

 

After that you can directly go to reinstalling the Operating system from the DVD and skip steps like listing hardware components, backing up passwords, backing up bookmarks etc. (I will exlain below).

 

So during installation of the operating system (let us assume windows 7), you just need to make sure that only C is formatted (not D or E). It is always good to install the fresh operating system on a formatted partition. You need to know that formatting the whole hard drive is not necessary. Only the partition on which the operating system is going to be isntalled needs to be formatted. So just format C and carry on with installation.

 

After the operating system is installed, you need to do a few things to make your computer work at its full potential. First of all, you would notice that some hardware components are not working properly. This is because their drivers are not properly installed by default. So you need to install the drivers. However, unlike previous versions of windows, installing drivers in windows 7 is as easy as anything. You don't need to have a backup of drivers, You don't need to find the correct drivers. Infact, you don't even need to know which drivers need to be isntalled. All you have to do is update your windows 7 installaiton via its built in update application. The update application, alongside the updates for the operating system itselft, finds the updates for drivers, and if any driver is missing or needs updating, it would be directly installed with just a single click of the mouse.

This method has always worked for me and I think would work with most people using commonly used hardware.

 

Once your computer is running at its full potential, you need to install the software that you use to do your work. In my case I have setups of big software applications like office copied to D. I install it directly from there. For smaller applications like adobe reader, firefox, etc, I like to download the latest version directly from interent (because it doesn't take much time). So in this way, the computer would up and running better than before in just a couple of hours.

 

I mentioned above that you don't need to backup your passwords or bookmarks etc because the applicaitons of today have online backing features for such things. For example firefox has builtin feature to backup all the bookmarks online so that you don't loose any even if you wipe your hard drive completely (ping: they are not on your hard drive;P) Same goes for passwords because applications (or plugins) like lastpass will automatically create an online backup on their own servers and you don't need to worry about losing them..

 

So I think that the overall process in not difficult at all if correct methods are applied.....

[yordan 10]

After that you can directly go to reinstalling the Operating system from the DVD and skip steps like listing hardware components, backing up passwords, backing up bookmarks etc. (I will exlain below

Not totally agree. Hardware components you often need, I'll for sure forget which Ethernet adapter I have and which burner I use on my computer, moreover which webcam and wich microphone are embedded on my laptop?

Also looking what softwares are currently installed will help checking if I have all of them ready to be installed again.

And of course we are here talking about a clean full install, so wiping everything in order to get the full disk space available could also be interesting.

[velma 6]

(And I think that it is a common practive nowadays)

In an ideal world, I am sure this is how things are done, I for one organize my HDD in a particular way, there are individual drives for personal photos / videos , work & general media. The rest go into a separate drive where games and other hodge podge stew together.

 

You, I or many other members on this forum might know how to work around our computers but there are still many people who have absolutely no clue on how to work their computer let alone perform advanced tasks.

 

My mother bought her first laptop a few years ago and the computer shop which is a fairly well known company in our state gave her a computer with only ONE DRIVE! .. They also give you a copy of the Operating system in case you ever need it, NOT in a cd but in the SAME DRIVE! Now imagine, the same computer store serving other such customers spreading its vile disease of incorrect structure.. A multi state disease of corporate laziness...

 

I don't care whether they didn't have a tech on board , giving a system with only one drive is stupid. Of course my parents saw no wrong since to them, the laptop works and isn't that the whole point? ...

 

My dad keeps installing bloatware from unknown regions of the internet which bogs the system down. My cousin has a nasty habit of storing all her software in the C: drive which I am not personally comfortable with.

 

As for passwords, bookmarks and history.. I do not store any in my browser. I keep them all memorized... How barbaric! I know but I prefer keeping sensitive data on a place where I can keep them safe, I might sound very prudish but I don't like any applications that require me to store my data on their servers.

 

Earlier, I had a habit of using Evernote for all my articles because I could write up anything on my mobile/ tablet and then simply continue work from home / work since all I needed to do was sign into my account but now I use my own wordpress site to store my written work. But being human is to be a hypocrite, and like any dutiful hypocrite I do the very opposite of what I preach by storing my images on Picasa and nuggets of wealth in form of email attachments

 

Even if a person compromises on the clean install bit, listing your software is still the most important bit. Your current workstation is the result of constant trial and error, I know it is for me, I might have tried 10 different applications before sticking to one. And it is even more important for someone who has not BUILT their computer.

 

I don't think my mother has the original CD to the hardware drivers on her new laptop, and she sure as hell is not equipped technically to find the numbers on her own.

 

In another article, I mentioned how I had to reload the OS for 3 different machines because some dude my parents "hired" (picked off the streets more like) botched it. My parents had no idea what their machine was except for the fact that it said "Hp" and had "intel inside" ....

 

Windows 7 might install all the necessary drivers but your motherboard drivers need to be added first, no hardware drivers = no internet, no internet = midnight thumb twiddling. And when Mother tells me that she has no cds that could help me, I twiddled my thumbs faster... One of the machines had no CD ROM but she had the CD... I can write a movie on that one weekend alone.

 

Getting them to explain which software they had installed was even more painful because to novice users, all software comes magically from the computer or better still, the person who has more computer knowledge to themselves.

 

A clean install to me is like thoroughly cleaning your garage, throw away junk, wipe the shelves clean and fix things that you left pending for ages. Updating / Upgrading is as good as making space for new things. But this is only my own personal opinion. From the very beginning, I had issues with the Windows OS upgrade,

 

It might be convenient to have only C formatted and your old os boxed without touching the other drives but why would I want my old os boxed any way?

 

As for the other drives, you might probably have the habit of installing things on drives other than C.. Software once uninstalled from these drives leave goat poo pellets everywhere. Pellets that require plenty of sweeping... If not pellets left behind by software, then there is always the clutter we create ourselves with duplicates and files in wrong locations.

 

At the end of the day, everyone has a way or method of managing their machines, it depends on time and user level.. My guide was simply a detailed checklist to make sure you don't finish the process and realize that there are many things missing or malfunctioning.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Not totally agree. Hardware components you often need, I'll for sure forget which Ethernet adapter I have and which burner I use on my computer, moreover which webcam and wich microphone are embedded on my laptop?

Also looking what softwares are currently installed will help checking if I have all of them ready to be installed again.

And of course we are here talking about a clean full install, so wiping everything in order to get the full disk space available could also be interesting.

Well, surely most people will always forget the make and model of the individual hardware components of their computers. But the important thing is that with advanced operating systems like windows 7, you don't need to know the make and model of your hardware. The procedure of installing drivers for hardware components have become so automated that there is seldom any need to get to the depth of knowing the exact make and model of the hardware.

 

I have never known the individual hardware components of my computer because I never needed to. The process of installation of drivers by using windows update has worked so seamlessly for me that there has never been the need of manually installing drivers for hardware. And obviously one only needs to know the make and model of individual hardware components when installing drivers for them manually.

 

Secondly, for a clean install you don't have to wipe all data. I mean almost every user is meant to have some data stored on his computer. Some would have a huge collection of music, or movies. Others would have huge amount of documents and images. And the hard drive is meant to keep that data. In my opinion, it is a good thing that a clean install of windows doesn't need wiping off of all the partitions of the hard drive. It would have been brutal. Formatting only the partition which is meant to contain the operating system (mostly C:) and the fresh install of windows on that partition is equally effective as wiping off the whole hard drive with all its partitions. But this is only true when the data on other partitions is clean, inert and virus-free.

[yordan 10]

it is a good thing that a clean install of windows doesn't need wiping off of all the partitions of the hard drive

That's a point of view. Last time I used the rescue disk on a friend computer, it said "do you agree all the data will be lost?", I said "Yes", and it wiped off the whole disk.

Current computer are sold with a "create a rescue disk" program, which creates a rescue DVD. No Windows disk is currently sold, it's a way limiting the illegal copy problem.

And of course, the rescue disk works only if you did not modify your hardware, no disk change or other hardware tricks. And last time I thought it would only format the c: disk I was really stuipid, it dropped everything and all my friend text writing work was lost.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Well, thats really sad. Can you talk more about this rescure disk. Is it something that is officially made by microsoft or is it a facility given by the hardware manufacturer (compared to Dell DataSafe).

 

My personal opinion is that all kinds of rescue disks should leave the extent of erasing to the user. In the case you described, that user would definitely have needed some external storage space to keep his data safe. And this concept irritates me. If my computer has a large hard drive, and I cannot keep my data safe on it then what is the pupose of having such large (in terms of storage space) hard drives.

[yordan 10]

All OEM PC's today have this feature.

This avoids the need from the customer to buy the Microsoft installation disk.

The manufacturer pre-installs windows, and this pre-install settings can be written to a DVD (this should the first thing to be done by the customer). If you don't want to burn this rescue disk by yourself, you can buy it (from HP for instance).

When you boot off the rescue disk, it will re-install the PC exactly as it was delivered by the factory. This is the last-chance action, if nothing else could help you.

This is also the state your PC will get if you have a giant hardware or software problem and you ship it back to the manufacturer, they will put the system in the initial factory state.

[Spyda 0]

Thanks for this Velma.. I recently had to do this, except I didn't back anything up.. LOL. Bad idea.. lost all of my fils. Meh, I guess it's fine. Didn't have anything to valuable so oh well. Haha.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

When you boot off the rescue disk, it will re-install the PC exactly as it was delivered by the factory. This is the last-chance action, if nothing else could help you.

This is also the state your PC will get if you have a giant hardware or software problem and you ship it back to the manufacturer, they will put the system in the initial factory state.

Right now, what I am interested in is: What happens to the hard drive when someone restores his computer using the OEM provided rescue disk. Normally, when someone buys a new computer (with OEM installed operating system), there is just one partition occupying the whole hard drive. However, people prefer to have multiple partitions on their hard drives, because it is much more efficient and safe. So normally, people would create extra partitions in their hard drive while they are using their machine.

 

Now suppose that a person who bought a computer with OEM installed Windows creates 2 extra partitions in the hard drive (which originally had only one partition). But for some reason, this operating system crashes and needs to be reinstalled. And he inserts the rescue disk provided by the manufacturer (or created by himself when he first bought the computer), and restores the computer using this rescue disk.

 

> Will the hard drive be wiped off completely, deleting all extra partitions along with the data withing them.

> Will the user be asked about what to do with the partitions and hard drive or the data would be wiped without any prompt.

> If all of the data is wiped, how easy or difficult (or even possible) it is to restore the deleted data.

 

I am interested in this because normally when you install a retail version of windows, you are asked about how the windows should use your hard drive. And if you have for example 3 partitions (C: D: and E:), you can leave the D: and E: all together and not a single byte would be removed or added to these partitions.

 

Do the OEM rescue disks provide such degree of control..??

[yordan 10]

> Will the hard drive be wiped off completely, deleting all extra partitions along with the data withing them.

> Will the user be asked about what to do with the partitions and hard drive or the data would be wiped without any prompt.

> If all of the data is wiped, how easy or difficult (or even possible) it is to restore the deleted data.

I did it, the answer is very simple.

1. The hard drive is wiped off completely, all user's partitions are destroyed, the system is re-installed in a single partition using the whole disk.

2. The user is asked : you will loose your data, if you agree click "OK". I expected this to mean "your system data will be re-created and your user partitions will remain untouched", and I clicked OK. And all my data were lost, exactly as stated by the question.

3. My two partitions were distroyed and replace by a single one containing 2 gigs system, so no way for restoring the lost data.

So, the first thing, after installing a new system and having created user data partitions, is to start a backup campaign on a daily and monthly basis : every do a differential backup of your text data and pictures (for instance a xcopy with the appropriate date syntax in order to avoid backup up untouched text/picture files. And every month, a system backup of your boot disk, and a differential backup of your whole data disk, in order to copy all the new files to an external disk.

Of course, you also should have a look at the external disk health, I just lost my picture and music external disk, one week after having lost the motherboard of my main PC!

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

So as you mentioned in one of your previous posts, OEM recovery disks should be used as the last step to rescue your PC when all other strategies (that are relatively data sparing) have failed.

 

I am developing this opinion now that retail version of windows is much better than OEM installed versions, at least as far as data sparing in times of emergency is concerned. When you want to reinstall the operating system (for any reason), you get more flexibility with retail version of the windows.... not so with the OEM version. So with retail versions, you get to choose which partitions should be cleared and which should be not.

 

On the other hand, OEM recovery disks don't give you such freedom.

 

Now compare this with the fact that some computers that have Operating systems pre-installed as OEM, are actually a bit expensive than those who are Linux based or DOS based. So If you buy a computer which doesn't have an operating system and then you buy the operating system separately, the price won't be much higher than buying a computer with pre-installed operating system.

 

However, I think there can be many arguments about usefulness of OEM over Retail and I welcome them to be discussed here.....