I have read from many sources that recommend that
you reinstall Windows about twice a year since it will get bogged down
for any number of reasons. Why? Mostly because it is
Windows, Sorry Bill. But the truth hurts.
If your system starts bogging down or you notice a
performance reduction, it is probably time to totally reset your
system with a fresh install of Windows. You will also have to do
this if you get one of those pesky boot sector viruses or your last
install of windows is sluggish from the start.
It is best to print off this procedure before
starting
Using this procedure, you are
assuming 100% of the risk. If this procedure screws up your
system, Don't call me as you have been warned!
Below is a good way of doing a reinstall of Windows.
MAKE SURE you have
your Windows CD Roms and that they are in good working order.
Meaning no scratches on the CDs and that they can be read by your cd
rom drive.
Make SURE you have the CD ROMS, Files or floppies
to every piece of software you had installed. If you don't
have them GET THEM!
Have a Windows 98 boot disk, not and ERD for
Win2k or XP. Don't have one get it here on downloads page.
After you have all of your CDs, files backed
up, and a boot disk, you can then start the "Flattening" of the Hard
Drive. THIS WILL DESTROY
EVERYTHING ON THE HARD DRIVE!
Put in the boot disk. Once you get an A:>
prompt then using the script on the
Debug page. This will clear EVERY Partition on a
single Hard Drive.
After restarting, at the A:> prompt type in FDISK
Select "Y" for large drive size handling.
Select target hard drive (the same one you just
Debugged, usually the C: drive or the first boot drive)
Select Create partition.
After creating the partition, then restart your
system.
After restarting, at the A:> prompt type in
Format C: [hit Enter]
Type "Y" (without quotes) at the next prompt.
Once the formatting has completed (will take a
while on larger Hard Drives), then insert your Windows CDROM in to
the CDROM drive.
RESTART
At the A:> prompt type <cdrom drive letter
usually E: or D:> D:SETUP.exe
Then just follow the prompts. In the case
of WinNT, Win2k, and WinXP select to format the drive as NTFS. This
will be the more secure drive structure.
Once you have installed the operating system,
install programs in the following order:
Windows Updates
MS Office, Works, Word processing, Financial
programs
Spyware programs
Virus scanner
Then everything else
Make sure you turn off your
virus scanner when installing programs that you want. otherwise
you will be going through a reinstall of windows again.