How to erase my hard drive and start over


Issue

How to erase my hard drive and start over.


Checklist

The below recommendations are what a user should check before completely erasing their computer hard driveand starting over. Following these steps can prevent hours of hassles and headaches. If your computer is not able to boot into Windows Safe Mode skip this checklist.

 Did you backup all information on your hard drive? If the computer works, make sure the Windows CD, Recovery CD, or accessing the hidden System Recovery partition works before erasing anything. Do you have the necessary licensing and OEM numbers needed to register your software again? If you added any new hardware (e.g. printer, video, card, etc.) since you bought your computer make sure to have the discs needed to install those devices again. Be prepared to install dozens of patches after everything has been installed. It's very important that you do all Windows updates after installing a fresh copy of Windows on the computer. Have installation discs or be prepared to download an antivirus immediately after installing Windows. Finally, realize that re-installing any operating system to the point of completion is going to take several hours to complete.


Solution

Notice: remember that following the below steps will erase all of the information on your hard drive and make it like new. Once the below steps have been completed, you will not be able to reverse the steps if you want to recover possible lost data.

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Erasing the hard drive

Tip: If you have an OEM computer (Acer, ASUS, Dell, Hewlett Packard, etc.) it's likely that you have ahidden System Recovery partition and don't need to use any CD or DVD to restore your computer.

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The below steps are for users with MS-DOS 5.0+, Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows NT 4.0.

  1. Place the bootable diskette or disc inside the computer and reboot to get to the DOS prompt. In some cases you may need to boot the computer with CD-ROM support or press a key to boot from the disk.
  2. At the MS-DOS prompt type format c: /s
  3. The computer will ask you "Are you sure you want to erase everything on drive c:" if you are ok with doing this press "Y" for yes and press enter.
  4. After doing this, the computer will begin the formatting process. While the computer is formatting make sure no errors are encountered.
  5. Once the format process is completed successfully, at the MS-DOS prompt type fdisk /mbr and press enter. This should return you back to the MS-DOS prompt with no message. This step is not required but recommended.
  6. Once back at the MS-DOS prompt, reboot the computer with the boot disk still in the computer.
  7. Once back at the MS-DOS prompt, insert either the diskettes for MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 95, or the CD for Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows NT and click the appropriate link


MS-DOS usersWindows 3.x usersWindows 95 floppy diskette usersWindows 95 CD usersWindows 98 usersWindows NT 4.0 users

Windows NT 4.0 users

Windows NT can be installed several different ways. We recommend that Windows NT be installed using the below steps as we feel that these steps by far are the easiest way to install Windows NT 4.0.

First, we recommend that all users wanting to install Windows NT use the /b switch, which allows the users to not need to create the diskettes. We do, however, recommend that the user create the Emergency recover diskettes if they have not already been created after the installation of Windows NT.

Finally, before the installation of Windows NT, it is recommended that you run SMARTDRV, which will help the installation of Windows NT run a lot faster.

  1. Place the CD into the computer.
  2. Type X: (where x is the CD-ROM drive, often this is D:).
  3. Once at the appropriate drive, type CD WINNT and press enter to get into the Windows 95 directory.
  4. Once at X:\WINNT> Type winnt /b.
  5. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.

Windows 98 users

  • How to install Microsoft Windows 98.

Windows 95 CD users

  1. Place the CD into the computer.
  2. Type X: (where x is the CD-ROM drive, often this is D:).
  3. Once at the appropriate drive, type CD WIN95 and press enter to get into the Windows 95 directory.
  4. Once at X:\WIN95> Type setup to begin the installation
  5. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.

If you are encountering issues during the setup process, you can add additional switches to the setup command line. These switches can be found on our Windows 95 Setup Switches page.

Windows 95 floppy diskette users

  1. Place the first diskette of Windows 95 into the computer.
  2. At the A:\> Type setup and press enter to begin the installation.
  3. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.


Note: If you discover a bad diskette during the installation of Windows 95 it is recommended you contactMicrosoft for possible replacement.

Windows 3.x users

  1. Place the first diskette of Windows 3.x into the computer.
  2. At the A:\> Type setup and press enter to begin the installation.
  3. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.


Note: If you discover a bad diskette during the installation, it is recommended that you contact Microsoftfor a possible replacement.

MS-DOS users

  1. Place the first MS-DOS diskette into the computer.
  2. At the A:\> Type setup and press enter to being the installation.
  3. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.

 

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