uber messed up PC

[ohGrFreak]

this is really a OS problem, I will get to that part at the end:

my two month old baby is messed up! i signed on and wasn't able to sign onto MSN due to the fact that McAfee settings have changed. McAfee changed itself to let me on certain times of the day and restricted me to child settings blocking websites. i am the administrator, so i changed the settings back to full webistes and all time access, but McAfee refuses to keep these settings and keeps reverting back. I have ran Virusscan, Spybot, Ad-Aware and came up clean, so I tried to uninstall McAfee and sucesfully uninstalled part of it, then when I got to the McAfee Security Center part, the last part to uninstall, I was not able to uninstall it due to the computer thinking that I still had other McAfee components still on the comp. I restarted a few times to see if the settings went through from the other uninstalls. Now, i tried to reinstall McAfee to hopefully try another uninstall to be successful, I cannot even reinstall the uninstalled components, each time i try, it says that something interupted the install process, but won't tell me what.

So, i now plan to reformat the harddrive and erase all my files from the PC, since this seems the only way to get my PC up and running smoothly again. Here is my question:

When I reformat, I know all my files are deleted, but, does my OS (winXP home, NON-SP2) stay on the harddrive, or do i have to reinstall XP? If i do have to reinstall my OS, what does that entail and how long does it usually take, i have a 250Gig harddrive and XP home. When will i have to install the drivers for everything?

 

[Silent_Fear]

Here is my question:

When I reformat, I know all my files are deleted, but, does my OS (winXP home, NON-SP2) stay on the harddrive, or do i have to reinstall XP? If i do have to reinstall my OS, what does that entail and how long does it usually take, i have a 250Gig harddrive and XP home. When will i have to install the drivers for everything? [/B]

If you reformat, you will need to delete the partition. Meaning that the OS will be deleted, so you'll have to reinstall it. For me to reinstall the OS, and the OS only, it usually takes about 30-45 minutes. It will probably take longer to format the bigger hard drive though (mines only 60GB). You need to install the drivers after the Windows setup program takes you to the desktop.


Hope this helps,

-Silent Fear

 

[mre30]

Yeah you have to reinstall and it takes me about an hour for everything and I have a 250 gig harddrive

 

[ohGrFreak]

first of all, it won't let me format my drive. secondly, when i tried to reinstall windows, i clicked on the opion to overwrite old windows to start new, after a while it said that i can't install two OSs on the same drive, but i clicked to get rid of the old one, i cannot delete the drive that the old OS is on because it has files neccessary for the installaion of windows. how do i get rid of windows to install a new OS?

 

[YourPrinter]

lol! the easiest way to reformat (my way anyway) is set my cd drive to first boot (in bios) insert windows cd wait for load delete all partitions , format, install done

 

[ohGrFreak]

how do i get into BIOS when i can't get into safe mode? everytime i hit f8 and select safe mode, my comp restarts and i have to hit f8 again and then the same thing happens over and over.

 

[ohGrFreak]

Well, I gave up, I will just have the builder of the comp format and reinstall windows on the 90 day check up date.

But, I did get it nice and running good again, I finally, after hours of messing around, got McAfee security suite 6 off the computer, while doing this, I also took out quite a few non-needed programs, did a defrag with a aftermarket defrag program. After that, I reinstalled the old plain McAfee VirusScan, which is a lot lighter program than Security Suite, for my firewall that went out with Security Suite, I am now using ZoneAlarm, which seems to work very well, my browser seems twice as fast, but I still get messages when something trys to either access or change my files or internet.