My Windows XP Computer has been running very slow lately. I have run virus and spyware scans and removed all that I can. I was wondering about recovering my computer. Could I recover it using the Windows XP Home Edition disk and do a clean install or would that be a pain?? My computer didn’t come with actual recovery disks. If any drivers weren’t installed, would I still be able to start the computer up after I do the install? What drivers will I need?? Your help will be greatly appreciated. Also, could I just download all the necessary drivers from Microsoft without any disks or anything??? Thanks again.
Tagged with: microsoft • necessary drivers • recovery disks • spyware • virus • windows xp • windows xp home • windows xp home edition
Filed under: Clean Up Computer
You can do a clean install but you need to back up data that will be vital and you have installation disks for software you may need to reinstall. It will take a lot if you use a lot of applications. Just don’t reinstall any that haven’t been used in a while.
Sluggishness can be caused by several things that are of a non-malicious nature. Low memory, Close to full Hard Drive,
or Heavily Fragmented Hard Drive are other possible causes.
If you have a Dell computer Look for a folder labled DELL Drivers and save it. It will contain your drivers. If you have a Recovery Partition–It can be accessed through an F10 or Ctrl F11 usually depending on brand. This must be done at startup after POST finishes. The single beep at restart.
I would defrag disk, goto start>Run and type msconfig
select startup Tab and disable everything except for AntiVirus
See if performance improves.
Go get the drivers now. At least get the Network adapter driver so that you can get on the internet and get the rest of them after you do the fresh install.
Here is what I suggest. Get the drivers like I said. Put them on a CD or Flash drive. Save any data that you want to keep. Burn it or whatever. When you do the reinstall delete the partition that is there. Then when you create a new one….do not use all of the space. Leave yourself 20 GB of unused space…unless you have 2 drives then disregard this.
Load up your OS. Load your drivers. Get all the updates. Go into computer managment and create a logical partition out of that unused space and format it.
Load up the programs that you normally use. Office Suite, Burning Programs, Whatever….set up your programs to work the way you want them…outlook checks mail…yada yada…
Then defrag the C: drive and then Ghost the drive to a file and put it on that extra partition.
You will have a nice clean install fully loaded ready to go in case something like this happens again. In the future all you will have to do is save your data off and ghost that image back on to the C: and put your data back on. You may have to install a few more programs but you will be saving yourself hours of work.
This is how I do it. It is great. I do not worry about spyware or viruses….sure I scan for them….but I am not afraid. I can have my computer running perfectly in 20 minutes.
Good Luck