A Few Tips on Reformatting Your PC

Yesterday I faced the daunting task of cleaning out my PC. And there’s nothing like a freshly reformatted OS drive and a newly installed OS (with a clean and neat registry) to boost its speed back to like it was brand new. I’ve done the process so many times already that it feels like it’s muscle memory. As I was going about the task, I was going through a mental checklist on what I was doing. Anyway, I’d like to share it with you.

• Remember where you put your OS’ Product Key (Hint: If it’s a Windows PC, there’s a sticker on your CPU case).
• Take note of what’s relevantly installed in your PC.
• Backup all your documents, profiles, and bookmarks to another drive, partition other than the OS, or best, back them up to an external device/burn them on CDs/DVDs.
• Get hold of all your driver installer CDs and installer CDs/DVDs of your needed apps. If you’re afraid you lost them, better use this to back up your drivers.
• Set the BIOS settings to boot from the CD/DVD on higher priority than the hard drive. Booting from a Windows XP installer CD would bypass the OS currently installed in your PC and straight to the installation process.
• Format your hard drive partition where you’ll be putting your OS. Remember to use the file system that your PC has been running on just to be safe.
• Set-up the user account for your OS. Take not of the administrator passwords you put in.
• If your installer CD doesn’t come with integrated service packs, install the service packs manually.
• Install your motherboard’s device drivers.
• Install your video and sound device drivers.
• Install all the other peripheral drivers.
• Install a firewall.
• Install your Anti-virus.
• Install all your other apps.
• Run updates.

This process mostly works for a Windows XP PC. For some other articles on generally handling PC reformatting .

I’m proudly writing this through an Ubuntu partition by the way. If you’re planning to make a dual-boot Windows-Linux PC, read this. For installing Ubuntu, read this.