| Reformatting | "Warning"
If you feel unsure of your ability to properly implement any alteration to your PC, then you SHOULD DEFINITELY seek the assistance of a competent, experienced user or a local professional. The very first thing you need to do in preparation to reformat is to know what hardware is on your system and make sure you have all the drivers for it. Save these drivers on a few floppies or a CD if you have a CD burner. This is paramount! If you don't have the drivers for your hardware ready to go, reformatting will be nothing but a huge hassle for you and you might need to visit your local computer shop for these drivers. Some systems have hardware that is unique to those systems only (Like a combo sound/modem card in an HP or Compaq) and after a reformat, it's not like you can just hop online and go get them if your modem isn't installed to begin with. Some examples of the drivers you'll need to make sure you have are: -
Modem -
Sound Card -
Video Card -
Aftermarket or namebrand CD ROM or DVD ROM or CDRW -
Any addon equipment like a scanner, printer, webcam, mouse (yes mouse) Either have these disks on hand or go download the drivers from the manufacturer's web sites and save them to a disk.
*Note You can easily identify what the manufacturer or at least the brand of your hardware by going into your Control Panel (Start>Settings>Control Panel>System and go to the device manager tab. Click the plus sign next to your hardware to see what kind of hardware you have, and maybe even the manufacturer's name.)
The next thing you need is a boot disk (not a setup disk). You can create a boot disk by clicking Start>Settings>Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs. Go to the Startup Disk tab, insert your floppy, and click on "Create Disk". This is not a setup disk, this is just a boot disk that you'll need to reformat with. It will contain all the necessary stuff to reformat with, including CD ROM support. It will also be an emergency startup disk should you ever have problems booting your computer. If you've never done a reformat before, relax, the process is fairly simple. The longest it should take is about 45 minutes to reformat and reload Windows. If you're not ready to have more than one partition, please skip over this section and proceed to the formatting process. FDISK Instructions only. Skip to Formatting Process if you're not creating more than one partition. Personally, I use FDISK every time I reformat. I do this because I like to control my partitions and decide how much space Windows will get as opposed to how much space I want for files, etc.. With FDISK, you can set several partitions for different areas to store info. For example, I've got one machine with a 10 gig hard drive with 4 partitions. One for programs I download, one for web pages I design, one for Windows files, and one for other files. Using FDISK is completely up to you and is not necessary to reload Windows. Are we ready to learn about using FDISK to reformat? I want to point out that FDISK is a little more advanced. You've got a 6 gig hard drive, personally.... I wouldn't fdisk at all. FDISK is for setting and changing the partitions on your hard drive before you format it. This can be a little tricky, so if you don't get it the first time, you can always do it over (and over and over and over....lol) until you get it set the way you want it. Basically, from the beginning, you'd: -
Insert your boot disk and reboot. You'll get the command prompt, type fdisk and press Enter, -
When prompted, press any key to continue, -
Type Y to enable 32bit FAT (FAT32). -
Type 3 to delete existing DOS partition. -
Type 1 to delete the primary DOS partition. -
Type 1 to select primary DOS partition. -
When prompted for volume label, press the Enter key. -
Type Y to verify you really wanted to delete the partition. -
Press the Esc key and the system should reboot. Now you've deleted the primary and active partition, you'll have to recreate and set them. This is where it gets a little tricky. You'll need to decide how many partitions you want and how much space to give each one. Personally, I'd give Windows 50% of the primary partition. -
Type FDISK the at the command prompt and press Enter -
Type 1 - Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS drive and press Enter. -
Type 1 - Create Primary DOS Partition and press Enter. -
Follow the instructions to create a primary partition the size you want Do NOT choose 100% of the hard drive for C, unless you don't want any other partitions. If you DO want other partitions, choose something like 50%. -
Choose 2, and set your active partition, it should be your primary partition. Now that's done, we can set the extended partitions. They're called extended because they are actually on the same physical hard drive, but they are divisions within the hard drive itself. Kinda like your living room is your main partition of your hard-drive-house, but you've got a closet, a den, and a sunroom as "extended partitions". The are all still in the living room, but they are divisions within the living room.
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Type 1 - create extended partion. For this you should choose 100% usage. -
Type 1 - create logical drive, this should be a percentage of the extended partition created for the first logical drive created. -
Type 1 - create logical drive, this should be a percentage of the extended partition created minus the amount of space taken by the other logical drives. -
The drive sizes should go from largest to smallest. If they aren't, you need to delete the partitions and start alllllll over....lol. Formatting process Please print these instructions to use as a reference
I'd like to point out to everyone reading this, reformatting is NOT using a recovery disk. You must have an original Windows CD, you can NOT use a recovery disk to do this. If you've bought Windows, you will not be able to recover the applications found on your applications disk or your recovery disk. I want to be perfectly clear on this. (There are ways to trick Windows into using a recovery disk, but they are not legal so I won't discuss them) -
Reboot your computer in MS-DOS mode. You'll get a black screen with a blinking cursor and see a command prompt C:\. -
Type format C: exactly and press Enter. You'll be given one last chance to back out, confirm that you want to delete everything and continue. Now you get to sit and watch while the format proceeds. -
When this has finished, it's time to reinstall Windows. Insert your boot disk and reboot. You can use ctrl + alt + del to reboot. -
This will start the Windows Setup Wizard, which will handle the rest of this process. If, instead, you get a menu with 3 options on it, choose "Setup/Install Windows from CD ROM" or "Run Setup with CDROM support". Insert your Windows CD and proceed. -
When asked if you want to create and "Emergency Startup disk".....my advice is to DO IT! (You'll never have to rag on yourself for not doing it if you ever need it.) The rest of the install is cake, just answer the few questions it asks you and sit and watch. -
Once you have the system up and running again, click Start>Settings>Control Panel>System and go to the Device Manager tab to see if there are any little yellow "exclamation marks". If you see any, double-click the device and click on the "Drivers" tab. Then click on "Update Driver". (This is where having all those drivers on hand comes in to play.) If you've got a manufacturer's CD for a specific item, you can just pop it in the CD drive and auto-install it instead of updating drivers from the Device Manager. Windows will detect your CD ROM because of the information contained on the boot disk. Generally, Windows will load something like generic Oak CD Drive drivers. You can check to see if that's on your boot disk. If after you're up and running, you want to update the drivers for your CD ROM, you can do so. There's only one other piece of advice I'd give, and this is actually done after the reformat. MAKE A BACKUP POINT. Once you have the reformat completed and BEFORE you load any programs on your computer, Use Microsoft Backup (located under Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools) and make a backup of your entire C: drive. This backup will be a relatively small file and will fit on a CD easily. If at any time you get to the point of wanting to reformat and start all over..... you won't have to, simply restore this backup point. Trust me, you'll thank me later.
Read through this more than a few times. It can be confusing if you don't understand how partitions work. It can also be confusing if you're thinking too hard about it..lol. It took me several days to do my first reformat and set different partitions. Not because it was my first time, but because I didn't take the time to go and research it. I just jumped in and tried it then had to work myself out of the hole I'd dug.  ©luvbug Computing Solutions Center 2001, 2002, 2003 |
