Re: Emptying out my computer
From: Dana Brash (dbrash_at_Phongsaly.com)
Date: 10/18/04
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Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 02:40:39 +0800
Talk to your friends, find a geek, and buy 'em a beer, or dinner or whatever
they're interested in for helping you. Cash is always good too. ;-) If you
don't have someone help you, you'll be spending all your time on the phone
with Dell support trying to get them to understand the problem (my machines
are Dell too. Great product, lousy support. I won't buy another....)
I would recommend backing up all the files that you want to keep, including
all your email, formatting the drive and starting over. When you back up
your documents, you'll do a full virus scan. Take your time first and get
your files located into one folder, preferrably your "My Documents" folder.
Do this on your own. Only you know where you've managed to put everythign.
Do not worry about application settings, for the most part you'll lose them.
When someone comes to help you, they do not want to help you find all your
pictures.
Let someone help you get the email backed up. Mail being pretty much what
folks use their computers for, it's pretty important to make sure you've got
what you need. You'll want to make sure to locate your .pst file if you
use Outlook, or your mailstore for whatever email client you use. Try
creating a new profile and restoring your email 'backup' to that. It'll be
great practice for when you have to do it for real anyway. If you see
everything in the new profile, then you should be good to go.
For backup, probably good idea to have a second drive. Depending on the
amount of data that you want to backup. If you've got tons of music and
movies, you'll need a separate harddrive. If you've just got a few Word and
Excel docs, you can probably burn things to CD. A USB external drive would
do very nicely.
If you've had your Dell for 2 years, update the BIOS
(http://support.dell.com) and download the latest drivers. Make sure you
have the drivers for your printer/scanner/card
reader/toaster/whatever -else -peripherals -you've -added. Burn the drivers
to CD. This is particularly important if you've got your files on that USB
extrernal drive and you don't know for sure that your USB Hub will function
until you've loaded the drivers for it. Chances are it will, but not
guaranteed on a 2 year old machine.
Locate all your installation CDs. Do you have Office, Photoshop, QuakeIII,
and all the essential CDs lined up? Make sure that you have purchased a
REAL anti-virus application like eTrust (http://www.my-etrust.com/) or
Kaspersky (www.kaspersky.com) or even something almost real like McAfee or
Norton. Spend the money, it is important, please get something good.
Remember, you get what you pay for. I use eTrust, and particularly
recommend it now that they have client side email scanning integrated.
Once you are absolutely sure that you've got all your documents and email
and drivers and installation CDs in place, then you should be ready to go
ahead with the big wipe. This is where the geek you've hooked up with comes
in particularly handy. Basically it'll go like this: Boot to your XP CD,
format the drive, and re-install the OS. DEFRAGMENT the disk. Bring the
system back up, get anti-virus on it and updated first thing, install SP2
and all critical updates. Install all the drivers for your various
peripherals. Install all your Applications, download and install the
updates for those applications. DEFRAGMENT the disk. Restore your backed
up files. Restore your email profile. DEFRAGMENT the disk.
Do your homework and make a plan and everything will go well because you'll
know how to manage the situation when you realize your plan was wrong.
Make backups.
Have fun!
=d=
-- Dana Brash MCSE, MCDBA, MCSA dbrash@gmail.com "Dianna" <Dianna@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:305E8D17-6EBA-418C-8AF6-3ED03C92C83C@microsoft.com... >I Have had my computer for 2 years. It has been freezing up and is moving > very slow. I am very computer Iliterate and need some advice. I have > recently installed StopSign and removed some virus but I am still haveing > the > same problems. What I would like to do is take every thing out and start > over fresh does anyone know how to do this. I have a Dell and windows xp
- Next message: Dana Brash: "Re: explorer.exe closes and restarts (a circulus viciosus)"
- Previous message: Ken Blake: "Re: Which Spyware?"
- In reply to: Dianna: "Emptying out my computer"
- Next in thread: r: "RE: Emptying out my computer"
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