by Eileen Hughes

Created on: May 03, 2008   Last Updated: February 15, 2012

The main reason to format your computer is to remove and delete all the errors or a virus that is too hard to remove any other way. It will also make your computer much faster by removing excess material. Formatting your drive will refresh and virtually put it back to original.

Before you even think about reformatting your computer, you need to have an original and legal operating system. By this, I mean either XP Windows or Vista. You need to know the license or product key numbers for this disk. This will usually consist of four of five sets of four numbers.

Computer Drivers

First, you need to make sure you have a copy of all the drivers for your sound and video cards. You need the drivers for your modem, whether for dial up, wireless or broadband. If you do not have these drivers, you need to do a Google search and download the drivers for your particular computer. Make sure you have the correct ones. XP Windows does automatically install some but not all these for you. Therefore, DO NOT rely on XP doing everything for you.

If you are not sure what sound card is in your computer then right click on my computer, click on properties, click on hardware, click on device manager and then look at all the names of equipment so you can download the drivers.

Saving Files

Now you have to backup everything that you want to keep on your computer. Start copying all your email addresses, your favorites and all your documents, letters that you need kept. Systematically go through your computer and look at everything that you use the computer for, and backup everything like pictures, music, movie files that you cannot afford to lose. If you play games, then you will need to save the achievements that you have done. It would be horrible if you are halfway through a game and lose the lost and have to start from the beginning again. If you are not sure where to find this, go to the forum of that game on the net and it will tell you what to look for.

Save everything into a file and burn a copy of everything. If you have a large hard drive, you may need a few DVD disks. You could also do a backup to another hard drive. The thing is if you have, a virus on this one, it will quite likely be on that one too. Remember, once you have formatted your hard drive, it will be lost forever.

BEWARE DO NOT attempt doing this if you do not know anything about computers, as you could destroy your hard drive. Give it to a technician to do if unsure.

With this done you will need to set your computer

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