Need some tips! Anything to keep in mind when I re0install WIn XP. Any useful programs to help flush away unwanted residue from my HD? I have been afflicted with horrendous spyware as of late and not even some of the blockers and removal techniques have helped.
WHat steps should I take, I mean how should I go about reformatting since I haven’t had too much experience doing it? Does WIn XP offer a simple step-by-step feature?
First, back up all your pr0n onto CD.
Seriously, though, I’d suggest burning a compilation of all your latest hardware drivers onto disc first, so that once you reformat you can update all the drivers at once.
If it’s XP, you just stick the CD in the drive and restart the machine. It should boot off the CD and then you just select prompts. Choose the one to reformat. Remember to back up all your stuff first.
Download Autopatcher and burn to CD. Download SP1 if your copy of windows doesn’t have it already. Put Firefox and Thunderbird on cd along with a free firewall, antivirus and so on. Be prepared!
Burn these;
Drivers - a couple of versions for everything… that includes mother board, graphics card, sounds card etc etc etc (if it’s in your machine and has drivers back them up)
Your favourites folder. - there’s nothing worse (well there is but , you know, figure of speech) than getting everything up and running and you’ve lost that link to that very hard to find website.
Your ‘My Documents’ folder.
Any work from and program that may be affected by the format. (Unless it’s on a totally different partition, but still shit happens.)
Your Save games. And make sure you orgranise these. Don’t just chuck everything in one directory…
Backgrounds - themes and other things that make your PC pretty.
… which reminds me I’ve got to do all of this (seems to be the time of year) :roll:
Be aware that if you have any DRM media (mp3 files or such from a download service), the licence will be tucked away in a folder that may not necessarily be tied to your personal login (Puretracks, a Canadian service, stores the info in the All Users folder, for example). If you don’t back up the licence, you’ll have to become a scurvy dog of the high seas to get your music back.
I can vouch for the AutoUpdater than Midnight Son mentions. I did a recent reformat and put that and SP1 on CD, made things a lot simpler.