-- Posted by miparke8 at 7:52 am on April 6, 2006 I think I need to reformat my computer because it's not working right. I don't really know how to do it, can someone tell me how I can save everything on my computer to CDs, and then how do I actually do the reformating part? any help would be appreciated, also, I know that I'm noob so you don't need to let me know that. lol -- Posted by TDawg at 7:53 am on April 6, 2006 try hiring someone to do it. -- Posted by Bob B at 7:53 am on April 6, 2006 I would ask a comupter sells men.. -- Posted by miparke8 at 7:56 am on April 6, 2006 i don't want you guys to tell me to get other people to do it, i just want some instructions because i know its not that hard -- Posted by Rhapsody at 8:05 am on April 6, 2006 First do you have the CDs that your computer came with, when you bought it?? Especially the Operating system CD and the drivers CDs? -- Posted by skater4life at 8:08 am on April 6, 2006 why don't you just buy a whole new hard drive? -- Posted by G I JOE at 8:08 am on April 6, 2006 well if you a computer nerd friend ask them or if you know a local computer technician then ask him if he will tell you what to do or call the company that made your computer and ask them cuz some companies really help with a setp by step process on help -- Posted by The PK at 9:36 am on April 6, 2006 What make is your computer and how old is it (roughly)? If it's a brand such as Dell or HP which is fairly recent (last 2 years or so), then chances are a button press during the PC "boot up" is all you need to completely reset the PC and put it back the way it was when you first bought it. If it's a little older, or if the manufacturer doesn't have the "System Recovery" function enabled, then you'll need the operating system CDs that would have come with your PC. Basically, put the CD, you should get a prompt to restart your PC and it should take you through the process step by step from there. In terms of backing everything up, you can just burn the files you need onto a Data CD, although a DVD would be better (far more space). Either use a burning program such as Nero, Roxio, Record Now etc. to add the files you want to each CD/DVD, or move all of the files you want to save into folders, with each folder being just under 700MB (or ~4400MB for DVD) and then burning each folder to a CD/DVD. Before you do this though, do you know what it is that is wrong with your PC? Reformatting isn't exactly the nicest task and requires an immense amount of patience to have to back everything up, reload Windows and then load everything back onto the PC. Only reformat unless you absolutely have to! -- Posted by BostonDave at 9:51 am on April 6, 2006 Damn it's been a long time since I reformatted a Windows box. You can do it several ways, the easiest is probably with the Disk Tools -> Reformat thingy. -- Posted by llamafarmer at 7:47 am on April 10, 2006 This is really easy...you need a burning program like Nero, Pinnacle, or Roxio. Then you just need to run Disk Tools -> Format Hard Drive. It will restore all your settings to default. -- Posted by Snow Blind at 3:34 am on April 15, 2006 There are a number of ways. If you are going to reformat the disk which your OS is installed on then I would just boot up the computer from your OS cd's and then reinstall the OS by reformatting the whole thing. At least that is how I do it with my Xp.