Reinstall XP after Disk Wiping?

[goel0012]

If I use a disk wiping utility like Eraser or Heidi Eraser to clean my harddrive, is it easy to reinstall XP after? Better options?

 

[darkknight22]

yes it's fine. I've never used those in particular. The windows install CD gives you the option to reformat (erase) your drive. I'm sure those programs may do a better job but I've never had an issue with the onboard windows one. I do this all the time and it is truly the best way to get your computer back to a "perfect" state. Just a quick checklist of what I usually do:

-Make sure you have a reinstall CD
-Make sure you have your cd key handy
-Make sure you have backed up all of your data before beginning
-Grab the drivers for your computer and/or applicable components before beginning from the manufacturers website
-Burn those drivers to a CD, DVD, or USB storage device (like a thumb drive)

Fun part:
1. Go into BIOS (usually press F8 when you turn on your computer)
2. Make sure the Boot Options are set to Boot to your CD/DVD drive first.
3. Insert XP CD and exit the BIOS saving changes.
4. When it reboots it will say something along the lines of "Press any key to boot to CD......"
5. Follow instructions and press any key
6. A blue screen (not the one you are probably used to seeing) will come up and load a bunch of stuff
7. Continue and follow all of the steps
8. Make sure you elect to NOT recover and continue to install
9. You will see a list of all partitions on the physical drive. Delete them ALL and confirm that yes you know you will lose everything.
10. You should be looking at the only option that says "unpartioned space" select it. (saying to install windows over the entire hard drive)
11. This is the reformat part. Select either one (I usually do the non-quick one, but either works).
12. Go make some coffee or watch TV. Let it do it's work and reboot on it's own (CD still in)
13. Eventually it will start asking you questions, fill all out appropriately and you're done.

It's much easier then it looks. Once you get past the first time jitters it'll become second nature.

 

[goel0012]

Thanks Darkknight22, I have been trying to do this using the XP CD but have been reinstalling over the old partition so I still have all that old crap left over on my old install, I'll delete the old partitions and install and tell ya how it goes. Thank You, Matt (goel0012)

BTW, it's help like this I get from Tom's that makes this one of the best sites on the web, thanks again.

 

[darkknight22]

no problem. You will know that it's all gone for sure if you complete the format process. Let me know how it goes.

 

[goel0012]

All went well...too well I deleted ALL partions not realizing that I still had my flash drive connected and it must have been one of the partitions Oh well, it was only everything I needed to save...resume, movies, music, drivers, etc.I had my driver CD for my mobo and will use the web to find all the other drivers I need, resume was out-dated, movies were illegally downloaded as was most of the music, the etc was just that, cant even think of what else was on there so it wasnt important anyway lol!!
Gonna keep workin on the list of programs I want back...VLC, Firefox, uTorrent and others
Anyway, thanks again, I feel like I have a brand new PC and its runnin great

 

[darkknight22]

better time to start fresh anyway lol. if you have another computer you can pull off network drivers to get yourself on the internet then download the rest.

best part is now you know how to do it for next time and it wont be so scary. don't forget to throw in CCleaner to clean up your registry and tune your startup for better performance.

i'd hold off on installing the CD drivers depending on how old your mobo is. Most likely the ones on the CD are outdated as they replace the ones on the website. Since you're taking the time to reinstall all of this stuff might as well get the freshest drivers for the mobo as well.

No problem. Please don't forget to mark any of my posts with the "best answer" so that the thread converts into a "solved" one. Thanks!

 

[peterinco]

deleted for now

 

[ramond3]