How to do complete system rebuild?

[swampwiz]

My system seems to have some intractable operating system errors (i.e., can't do Windows update, can't properly install .NET, etc.), so I will be doing a complete system rebuild. I have the OEM recovery disk, but as well the identical OS in ISO format that I put onto a stick drive via the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. Because of the crapware on the recovery disc, I prefer to use the stick drive. The system hard drive is currently set up into 2 main partitions, but I would like to have it all as one main partition. (There may be some small partitions for the OS or whatever; of course this will be left alone.)

So my first question is what do I need to do so that the system boots to the stick (which I presume it can do)?

Then I would like to know how to do the repartition, and the format of the hard drive before loading up the OS. I figure that there must be some way to do this while booting up from the stick.

And if possible, I would like to do "dress reheasal" to make sure that the stick drive will work once I begin this process! Of course I have everything saved to external drives, so that is not an issue, but I must be assured that once I do this, I will have a properly installed OS!

Thanks a lot!

 

[USAFRet]

Do you have a spare hard drive laying around?
If you do....take out all existing drives, and do a dry run with that spare.

 

[photonboy]

Hi,

1. As long as your BIOS has the boot order set so that USB (i.e. "USB HDD" or whatever) is first it will boot from any bootable USB stick.

2. When you begin the Windows Installation you can delete the old partitions. It will then show the drive has "unallocated" Space, with the FREE and TOTAL size being equal.

3. No "practice" needed but:
a) Get any data you need prior to reinstallation, and
b) Make sure to install the correct drivers (MAIN CHIPSET, video, audio etc)

You may want other additional software at the motherboard or PC support site.