For reformatting I use a free program from www.ntfs.com called "Kill Disk".
Don't be afraid of the name. What it does is rewrite the disk into all 0's. The free version only does one pass but you can do it a few times over to be sure.
This will get rid of any hidden partitions that many PC vendors put on HDDs.
The program can be downloaded onto a floppy (what's that 
) or a bootable CD.
Normal formatting does'nt wipe the data from the disk, it just tags it as being writeable so therefore if you have bad heebly greeblys on your disk they will stay behind after formatting.
After running "kill disk" simply insert your OS disk and rebuild your system.
Avast anti virus is the flavour of the month these days. I have heard that AVG will soon no longer be free. I think Avast has anti spy ware built in. Ad Aware from Lavasoft still seems to work OK.
With Avast, Ad Aware and XP's firewall my PC seems to remain trouble free. If you want to run an online analysis of your PC try www.pcpitstop.com .
Do I reformat and then run kill disk, or just run kill disk on my PC as is, with everything installed - and then I have an 'as new' HDD?
Before you format your hdd, just make sure you have all your driver discs. ie. motherboard, sound card, video card etc. If you dont have them, d/l them from the manufacturers site and burn them to disc.
Can be a real pain in the a$$ to find 1/2 through the install that you dont have all the drivers - esp if you dont have the modem up and running and cant d/l the drivers you need. The generic drivers with windows wont always work.
Don't think you can't reformat while booted in windows, if you did it would erase itself.
The only way I know how to do it is with a "live CD".
This virtually what the install CD is, you have to make sure the bios is set to boot of a CD, then the software on the CD looks after everything. Usually the bios can read the CD drive, I think the drivers are for the more complicated stuff.
Not sure if the install CD gives you a reformat option.
Before going crazy on a reformat, have you got enough RAM? Just go Crtl+Alt+Del and choose task manager.
I found recently that my physical memory was less than I was using (Commit Charge). Windows has a habit of sneaking a bit more memory for every update it applies and getting very bloated.
Extra RAM cost me $100 and improved the speed a lot.
Mark: It depends.
If you bought your PC from a generic manufacturer, Dell, HP, Toshiba etc. you can probably just pop in the Windows installation disk that came with it. It will probably give you an option to reinstall everything.
Click "Yes".
Click "Yes, I really want to do this".
Click "Yes really, I am really absolutely sure".
Wait 20 minutes. It's going to be that easy. 
If you didn't get a generic PC you'll need all the driver disks, well Motherboard, CD etc, low level stuff. It'll be a bit harder. Things like sound card you can find on web later, if even needed. I've worked in I.T. for 8 years, do some complex programming but if my PC is kaput I just dial tech support on 55555. In other words don't feel too stupid, I dunno how they work either. 
I'm compfused now. I think I'll just drop $300 ish on a secondhand (like 1 y/o) sh!thot PC with no monitor / keyboard / speakers etc and then later fiddle with this one to reformat and make it my kid's one. He's 4 and is strating to play educational games etc a little.
Make a cup of coffee and start reading a book is one option.
The program may take an hour or more to do it's task depending on your processor speed.
How do you re-boot Vista without a disk. Got the laptop from Shop without a disk.
our old one was a piece of piss. just stck the start-up cd in answer a few questions and away you go.
But no disk...what do i do?? should i have rceived a disk, or do we re-boot computers from a partition on the gard drive...... i don't know if i'll even understand the answers given how **** i am at asking questions
With the popular consensus on Vista being thumbs down, get hold of an XP disk and do what I said above. It took me a while to become a convert from Win 98SE to XP but I bought a new Dell Dimension E520 about three years ago and it has never missed a beat. It has been running on the original install all that time and I think it has had only one recovery form a serious error.
XP Professional is probably the best version of Windows ever.
^^^^
prblem is they arnt supporting XP after this year, which means other software packages will not support xp.....
