If you are fed up with your PC running so slowly and giving you errors on startup that you just can’t get rid off then maybe it is time to reinstall winows.
When you reinstall windows you take the pc back to ‘bare metal’ and reset it back to the factory defaults, as though it is brand new. Then if you just reinstall the software that you actually need instead of reinstalling absolutely everything your pc will run a lot better.
Before you reinstall windows there are a couple of things you might try.
First of all make sure your anti-virus software is up to date and you’ve run a full disk scan. In my opinion there is only one anti-virus package that you should use and that is Avast Anti-Virus, and for home users it’s free. In my many years of doing a reinstall of windows I have had a lot of machines come in and even those with a fully up to date version of AVG or Norton’s I have found viruses on them and Avast has removed them, so always try that first.
The other piece of software in my tool kit is Spybot Search & Distroy. This is another piece of free software which is invaluable. Once installed it will protect the central registry where all programs that you install are registered and it won’t allow anything to be added or removed from the registry without your permission, brilliant! Quite why Windows doesn’t already do that is beyond me but then it keeps me in work so I’m not complaining!
The other brilliant trick with Spybot is that it literally lets you lift the bonnet of your windows installation and see all of the windows startup items, and lets you turn them on and off as you require. Every one of those programs uses up precious resources so the fewer of them that there are the better your system will run.
The next thing to do is to backup all your files and other stuff, because when you have completed the reinstall of windows they won’t be there anymore if you don’t! The things to backup are; Desktop files, My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, Favourites and Email. Depending on which email software you use, you may need to also backup your contacts.
To backup all these files you will need either an external hard drive or a network share with enough free space to hold them all. To find out how much space the files occupy go to Windows Explorer and right click on the folder, say My Music and select Properties. Depending on how many files you have it will eventually give you the size of the folder and all its sub-folders in MB. Repeat this process for each folder and add up the figures to give you the total amount of free space you will need.
Desktop – Just copy the files and folders, don’t bother copying the program shortcuts as these won’t work when you copy them back anyway, and when you reinstall the software the shortcuts can be recreated then. Sometimes there is a shortcut to My Documents etc on your desktop, make sure you copy the actual folders themselves, see below.
My Documents – To copy your My Documents open Windows Explorer and go to C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\My Documents
Email – Depending on which email software you use the procedure for copying your emails and contacts differs slightly. For the sake of this guide we will be referring to Microsoft Outlook, or full-fat outlook as we call it within our office, as opposed to Outlook Express which comes already installed on Windows XP.
Outlook uses a single file to store all email messages and contacts, called a post office file (which has a .pst extension and is usually called outlook.pst) so when you have located the file you can copy everything that is currently in your email in a single operation.
Before you can copy the file though you have to tell windows to show hidden files and folders because they are hidden by default. To do this launch Windows Explorer which is in Accessories by default, and select Tools, Folder Options and then in the Folder Options dialogue box select the View tab and change the radio button setting from Do not show hidden files and folders, to Show hidden files and folders and select OK and confirm the action.
By showing hidden files and folders you will now be able to locate your post office file at:
C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsft\Outlook\outlook.pst and copy this to your external hard drive or memory key, the Outlook post office file can get as big as 10GB so check the size of it first and ensure you have available disk space.
For Outlook Express the emails are stored in separate files and folders so you have to copy them all. These folders can be found in:
C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\Application data\Identities\{4B051196-FE16-4D8D-8F92-CB870799206D}\Outlook Express\
For Outlook Express you have to copy the contacts in a separate action or they wont be there when you have reinstalled, don’t make the rookie mistake of losing all your contacts, or your client’s contacts! To do this, open Outlook Express and go to File, Export, Address Book and in the Address Book Export Tool dialogue box select the Text File(Comma Separated Values) option and click Export and save the file to your external hard drive or memory key.
Favourites – If you use your Favourites in Internet Explorer copy all of the favourites from
C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USE NAME\Favourites
If you use any other specialist software that saves files or settings in other locations then make sure you copy these files also and make sure you have got the discs and license keys to reinstall everything, it is a good idea to make a list on a piece of paper so you can tick them off as you work through the list. Start with your Windows XP disk and license key (usually can be found on the sticker on the outside of the case) and your Microsoft Office installation disks and license key.
Drivers – If your PC was provided by a reputable manufacturer you may find there is a folder on your C Drive called Drivers, and it contains the software for your video display, network adapter and things like that. In most cases drivers can be downloaded from the Internet but if you have the ones that came with your pc start with those.
OK so now go to the appropriate page below to reinstall windows
Reinstall Windows 98 – This is a very old operating system if this is the version you have please consider upgrading to at least Windows XP.
Reinstall Windows ME – This is also a very old operating system and in my opinion probably the worst of all Microsoft creations so again consider upgrading to at least Windows XP.
Reinstall Windows 2000 - The first of the Microsoft operating systems that were anby good and was based on a favourite of ours which is a almost long forgotten, Windows NT4, both of which featured the new NTFS file system over the old FAT based system. NTFS is also used in Windows XP, Vista and 7. If you have a Windows 2000 machine it might just run Windows XP without needing and extra hardware so consider upgrading.
Reinstall Windows XP – Our old faithful against which everything else is now measured. As good today as it has been since service pack 2 so if you want reliability and great performance you can’t go wrong with Windows XP.
Reinstall Windows Vista – The one everyone moaned about, including me! At first I installed it mainly because of its sexy looking interface, but Microsoft committed the ultimate product development faux pas, by making something that actually did things worse than its predeseccor!
Reinstall Windows 7 – So far so good! At the moment I have only had 1 support call about Windows 7 but I now have it installed on Two my machines and really like it.
