PVR said:
I need to reformat my HD.
Why? What makes you think so? It's seldom true (see below).
Is there a recommended "best" way to do
this? Right now I am planning on a backup of the 'Program Files'
No, that's useless. When you format and reinstall Windows, all of the
registry entries (and other files) pointing to your installed programs will
be lost. After a reformat and reinstall, all your programs will also have to
be reinstalled.
You can backup and save your data, but not your programs.
and
'Documents and Settings' folders followed by a format from the
Command Prompt.
No, you can't format from the Windows command prompt. See below.
The reason for this is I seem to have picked up a malware which the
experts cannot solve. I am assuming a reformat will remove whatever
is causing my problems.
What experts have you tried? Where? If your problem is malware, and you
don't find out what it is and how you got it, my guess is that after
reformatting and reinstalling, you will very likely repeat the behavior that
got you infected, and shortly find yourself back in the same situation.
That's one of the reasons I don't believe in doing this to solve such
problems.
Then I shall reinstall Windows XP from the
distribution CD followed by reinstalls of software and a restore of
the backups.
Is this OK?
My standard post on this subject follows:
You can't format the Windows drive from within Windows, since that would
leave Windows without a leg to stand on.
Just boot from the Windows XP CD (change the BIOS boot order if necessary to
accomplish this) and follow the prompts for a clean installation (delete the
existing partition by pressing "D" when prompted, then create a new one).
You can find detailed instructions here:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
or here
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/XPClean.htm
or here
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm
However why do you want to reformat and reinstall? In my view, it's usually
a mistake. With a modicum of care, it should never be necessary to reinstall
Windows (XP or any other version). I've run Windows 3.0, 3.1, WFWG 3.11,
Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, each for the period of
time before the next version came out, and each on two machines here. I
never reinstalled any of them, and I have never had anything more than an
occasional minor problem.
It's my belief that this mistaken notion stems from the technical support
people at many of the larger OEMs. Their solution to almost any problem they
don't quickly know the answer to is "reformat and reinstall." That's the
perfect solution for them. It gets you off the phone quickly, it almost
always works, and it doesn't require them to do any real troubleshooting (a
skill that most of them obviously don't possess in any great degree).
But it leaves you with all the work and all the problems. You have to
restore all your data backups, you have to reinstall all your programs, you
have to reinstall all the Windows and application updates,you have to locate
and install all the needed drivers for your system, you have to recustomize
Windows and all your apps to work the way you're comfortable with.
Besides all those things being time-consuming and troublesome, you may have
trouble with some of them: can you find all your application CDs? Can you
find all the needed installation codes? Do you have data backups to restore?
Do you even remember all the customizations and tweaks you may have
installed to make everything work the way you like? Occasionally there are
problems that are so difficult to solve that Windows should be reinstalled
cleanly. But they are few and far between; reinstallation should not be a
substitute for troubleshooting; it should be a last resort, to be done only
after all other attempts at troubleshooting by a qualified person have
failed.
If you have problems, post them here; it's likely that someone can help you
and a reinstallation won't be required.
