...nothing more than restarting the computer.. If you've got the original Recovery discs from the factory, that's all you really need to format the drive and reinstall all the software as it came from the factory.. It will format the drive, then reinstall the operating system and all programs BUT ONLY THOSE PROGRAMS that came presinstalled originally. It's fairly easy to do this.. Depending on your computer, you may already have a Recovery partition (a "D" drive maybe) from which it will do the same thing.. ON many HP computers, simply click on Start-All Programs-PC Help & Tools-HP Application Recovery and the options will be given to perform a full "Destructive" Recovery or a "non-destructive" recovery which simply copies the XP system files "over the top" of the previous installation.. The "non destructive" version doesn't wipe/format the drive. If there is no Recovery partition on your computer, simply place the HP Recovery Disc #1 in the CD/DVD drive, then restart the computer and follow the prompts.
If you have other programs or drivers that you've used to update the computer, you'll need to have backups made and burned to a CD/DVD. All Windows Updates can be done after the reinstall simply by visiting the Windows Update site. Likewise, if you've got important documents, files, music, videos, etc., then you'll need to burn those to a CD/DVD as well.
If your original XP installation wasn't at Service Pack 2, it is possible to download the full SP2 installer file and save it to a CD.. After the reformat and reinstall, you could then install SP2 by running the full installer.. Follow the instructions in the link below to download the SP2 installer and prepare for the installation:
Preparing Your Windows XP Computer For SP2
Hope this helps.
Grif
I would like to know how to completely wipe my computer properly and do a complete reboot of my computer. I am not a complete beginner but close.
I have an HP a712n computer and am running Windows XP Home Edition with Windows Works Suite added, and I have the original startup discs from the manufacturer. I know there is a way to wipe your computer clean before reinstalling them and starting over so that you can get all your hard disc space back and actually start like brand new I just don't know what that is, I was hoping someone could explain how to do it to me, I have added a few things since buying the computer( I added more Ram a larger power source and I changed my video chip to a video card) and would like to get some of the space back from between add ons. I was shown once at a computer store and the gentleman called it a radical something (for wiping)but what he showed me didn't stick with me long enough for me to use it, so I was hoping since I read on here all the time about people rebooting their computers at least once a year to keep them running reasonably fast that I could maybe get some help and maybe some help as to how to make a new set of Backup Discs such as which files to back up beside personal stuff to keep up with all the updates we get from Microsoft since starting from scratch on a 2 year old computer takes a lot of hours just adding the updates.
Thank you, Dennis
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