Erasing and Reloading Hard Drive

[Kain702]

Hi,

I have had a fairly new Gateway Desktop for about over 3 years now. Recently, it has contracted a virus that won't let me get on the internet. I was thinking about paying plum antivirus services in order to remove the virus, but then again I was like, why not just erase the hard drive because there isn't anything too important on it and I could just back up all my docs on a USB drive. I'm not too tech savy so I was hoping someone could walk me through this process and tell me exactly what I need in order to erase and "reload" the desktop successfully. I really just want to re-install windows xp and get my internet working again. Like I said, I don't really have anything too important on there, so programs, unnecessary files, and documents can be trashed if need be. PLEASE GET BACK TO ME ON THIS. Thanks a lot

[Xylon]

if you can delete complete partition of your that drive would be better. Use windows bootable disk delete all partition then create new one then start installation on first drive that will ask you to format drive now dont go for quick format. now after installation of complete windows install good antivirus now here use Trusted usb drive which you scan from another computer dont use your usb drive that could be contain virus install antivirus update it.

[Rudra.J]

Yeah, just use the windows bootable disc to repartition your disk drive. On the first screen press Enter to install windows. Then on the next screen agree the license agreement and then you will be asked if you want to repair the existing windows installation. Press 'Esc' to not repair the existing windows. Then delete all the partitions by selecting them and pressing 'd' for each partitions. Then when there is only one disk partition is show press 'c' to create a new partition, enter the partition size and press enter, then again do it by pointing to the unallocated space for as much partitions you want to create. There will be 8Mb space unallocated, let it be as it is, now go to the first partition which will have the label as drive 'C:' and press enter. This will start the windows setup... Hope this helps, all the best...

[Kain702]

Excuse me for being slow when it comes to this stuff but what exactly is a partition and how many new ones should I create after I delete the old ones?
Thanks

[Rudra.J]

Excuse me for being slow when it comes to this stuff but what exactly is a partition and how many new ones should I create after I delete the old ones?
Thanks

It depends on you... How many partitions do you need. Partitions are just sections which logically divides a hard disk space into smaller partitions. You can choose how many partitions do you need. Like you can have the first drive for windows, then second for your personal data third for multimedia fourth for office data, so on, i have 2 hard disks so there are seven partitions for me... You can decide how many partition you want. Partitions are helpful as suppose one partition gets corrupt, the data on the other partition is safe...