03-19-2004, 11:57 AM | #1 |
The Magister
Join Date: May 17, 2003
Location: England at the moment :(
Age: 37
Posts: 102
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hi,
I was just wandering if any1 knew a quick way to totally wipe everything off my computer except windows? i got so much rubbish on here and it would take years to try clean it all off by hand. thx
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03-19-2004, 12:19 PM | #2 |
40th Level Warrior
Join Date: October 29, 2001
Location: Western Wilds of Michigan
Posts: 11,752
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I would format and reinstall windows. There's no safe way otherwise... unless you'd like to walk through all the DLL files and try to determine what you need, or through the registry to figure out what belongs...
If possible, install Windows onto a new Hard Drive, and then boot from that to format and install on the old one. Do consider that everything will be gone. I personally try to save at least my data in case I need it (pack rat, I know). Good luck.
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03-19-2004, 04:27 PM | #3 |
Harper
Join Date: October 2, 2001
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
Age: 42
Posts: 4,774
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Trouble is most things you install insert information into the registry. To get back to a clean installation of windows after some time is virtualy impossible, and in any case its much faster to delete everything and start again from scratch.
In future, you may want to consider making a norton ghost image of your hard-drive just after installation, and then you can simply replace that image and get back to a clean state, however you will lose any applications installed after you made the image.
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03-19-2004, 05:56 PM | #4 |
Zartan
Join Date: March 11, 2001
Location: North Carolina USA
Age: 57
Posts: 5,177
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Is it a good idea to format and reinstall every so often with XP? I know people who used to do it twice a year with 98, but is there a true benefit under XP if you aren't having problems?
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03-20-2004, 01:49 PM | #5 |
Gold Dragon
Join Date: May 19, 2002
Location: Blessed are those who are not....
Age: 43
Posts: 2,556
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One hint: make a seperate partition for winxp of about 4GB. Dont install anthing else on it. This way you can reinstall win in a flash with total clearance of rubbish files. I really recommend doing this!
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