Is there a way I can clean my hard drive of everything but windows xp?

October 7, 2009

I want to clean out my hard drive so my computer can run faster. I was wondering if there is a way to clean my hard drive and only have windos xp left on it?

how to wipe / clean up computer? hard drive?

October 7, 2009

i’ve had my latptop for about a year, and there’s a few minor annoying problems with it, when i hit shift key sometimes everything cap locks, recently, i keep getting a blue screen that says i must shut down, supposedly a ‘serious error;’ and my computer might have viruses, adware, spyware, etc; i’m thinking easiest way is to buy a protable hard drive, transfer all data there, and wipe out my laptop(how do this?), and then transfer files from protable drive back to laptop; however, if i have installed software such as photoshop, will this be erased also? any other ways to clean up computer?

How could the files in my Vista user profile disappear only to be found by data recovery software?

October 2, 2009

Here is my situation. I was surfing the web on my two year old Dell Inspiron 1521 laptop with Windows Vista when the computer froze and locked up. I could not click on anything or do anything. I restarted the computer. As it restarted the Windows Startup Repair window came up. It scanned my computer and found errors that it could not fix automatically. It told me that there was no operating system installed. I went online and troubleshot the computer as best as I could. I did not want to lose the information on my hard drive so I went out and bought a new one and installed Windows Vista on it. After two months, no problems. I ordered a case and USB connector for the old hard drive. When I plugged it in to the computer and looked inside the files I was stunned. All the files under my username were gone. Windows said the folder was empty. How could this be? I found data recovery software that scanned my old hard drive and was able to recover all my files. The files were only lost; they were sitting on the hard drive but could not be accessed except after the data recovery software did its job. I have been trolling the web looking for answers. Can anyone explain why or how this could have happened? What can be done to prevent this from happening again?

How to clean up a hard drive on your puter? Have to give it back to work and I dont want them to see my junk!?

October 1, 2009

I have to give my laptop back to work. I want to erase EVERYTHING I possibly can. I know how to do the basics with deleting history and cleaning out temp files but I want all of the stuff that is deep in the recesses of the hard drive GONE any help is appreciated! THANKS!

Geek Squad Repair issues?

September 30, 2009

A year ago, my daughter saved her own money to but a lap top computer.
We bought it, and an extended service contract from Best Buys.

It proved to be a lemon, and after several repairs (motherboard, hard drive, etc) they replaced it with another computer of a different make.

I paid for another extended contract…but when this machine had issues, they are trying to pawn it off on "software problems"—not covered and want to charge nearly 200 bucks to fix it.

Everyone who’s heard of the problem think the issue is power/ hardware related. While we were waiting to have the puter serviced, every customer was told the same thing "If the issue is spyware, it’s not covered…"

I think they are simply trying to weasel out of the contract, and "software" is just an excuse. Has anyone else had a similar experience with Geek Squad? It also took them 11 days to run a simple diagnostic. That’s absurd. So is paying 25 percent of the price of a product not even a year old.
My daughter says the screen goes black at random. She also said that re-booting doesn’t always bring it back.

She has a Toshiba laptop, and twice in the last year we had to replace the power cord. The first one used to get so hot it could almost burn your skin, but the latest doesn’t do that.

We use Avast and Ad Aware for anti-virus.

This doesn’t sound like any virus I have ever heard of. Opinions?
Even worse…when we retrieved the laptop, they tried to get me to sign a form that said it "had been repaired to my satisfaction.

THEN we found two new icons on the computer, one for a direct internet connection none of us had ever used, or heard, and the other for files equal odd.

Wonder what the boys do on their breaks?