want to format my laptop but dont know how

[dhream]

Hi i bought a laptop off ebay and its very very slow.
After running norton i found over 120 virus etc, it has spam and all kinds of junk i just dont want. Basically i want to make it brand new by reformatting but have never done this. On my PC i have disks that i put into my c drive and it reformats it for me. For the laptop i only have the Windows XP disk that installs windows XP.
Can anybody help me out as it takes about 5 minutes just to start up my laptop and i cant take this anymore.
How do i solve this and is there a way to wipe everything away and just start fresh?
Thanks

 

[Samm]

I believe, that if you just boot from the XP CD it will give you the option to format the drive before the reinstall.

If not, then providing the file system you have is FAT32 & not NTFS, then you can boot from a win98 floppy & run the format command at the dos prompt
ie format c:/s/q

 

[desiboi]

Go to bootdisk.com, then download Windows 98 Boot Disk. Format it, partition it, install windows, install drivers, install SP2, Never install norton, install AVG, or McAfee, Ad-aware, Registry Mechanic, PC Rescue, and some other stuff you want.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Norton is NO WHERES near as bad as mcafee, mcafee slows systems down to much and its a POS.

 

[desiboi]

????? Norton slows down machines. I had norton, took a long time to load. got mcafee, loaded under 1 min.

 

[idiotec]

The XP disk definately has a format utility on it. No need for bootdisk. Just boot off the xp disk and follow the instructions....

 

[Ankush09]

Mcaffee and norton both suck. Get something good like BitDefender.......

http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

 

[Samm]

Norton sucks big time, always has, always will

 

[idiotec]

Trend Micro PC-cillin

That is the shit.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Norton sucks big time, always has, always will

You know your product sucks when their's a better one that's free and undeniably better

-1 (million) for Norton and Mcafee

I would prefer a virus over Mcafee.