Can I borrow your sledgehammer?

[Canyarion]

Hm I guess I'll do that... Is there a way to save all my MP3s and other data without making back-ups?
I'm not sure if my CD burner will work... can i use it in safe mode??

BTW thanks for the help.

[Null]

be careful of what you save when you have viruses. mp3's i just put on my ipod :P i used to throw them over the network onto another computer. it would take like 30 cd's for me to save them on CD

[bobcat]

Originally Posted by Null

be careful of what you save when you have viruses. mp3's i just put on my ipod :P i used to throw them over the network onto another computer. it would take like 30 cd's for me to save them on CD

or you could add another hdd and copy....

[Null]

viruses can still hop over onto the new hard drive. if you got a virus problem i'd always recommend reformating before putting the new hard drive in.

[quiet mike]

The cleanest way to reformat is trough WinXP.
When you restart your computer, go into the BIOS and select to boot from CD before the HDD. Now put the WinXP CD in and restart. Follow the instructions until you get to install/repair screen. Here it will find the Partition of your System and it will also show you the other partitions. select the C:Windows partitions and pres "d" then wheterver it tels you about loosing info and "L" and other stuff. This now not only clean your partition, it deleted the format of the partition too. so now you can reformat and choose to have it FAT32(must if you have something before XP) or NTFS (recomended for XP). Now press "c" on the upartitioned space and change the size of the partition or leave it as is and create a partition the way you like it, and then install your System again.

If you choose to clean the games partition, remember to create it first and then the partition to install the system to.

Good luck.

[Null]

CD should already be infront of HD on the boot sequence.

if it isnt, the order should be..

Floppy
CD ROM (or DVD)
HD

[quiet mike]

Yes it should, but if you try to get the boot sequence as fast as posible you would put HDD first, and no swaping, and fast boot. Yeah I won't have my 1GB RAm checked but I will have my XP loaded 10 seconds faster.

[quiet mike]

Originally Posted by Canyarion

Hm I guess I'll do that... Is there a way to save all my MP3s and other data without making back-ups?

Partition, Partition, Partition (magic 8)

The virus you said is in your Windows, system32 folder. The problem with these is that it has registry keys, and reinstalls even after cleaning it, and the registry. It has a bunch of dummy files where it rebuilds from. So reformat is the best way to do it. Since the file is in Windows, reformat just the partition of your system. If you don't have more than one partition, or don't have enough space, get a program like Partitionmagic and do that before reinstall

[Canyarion]

Well I have 4 partitions, 1 for windos & software, 1 for MP3s, 1 for games and one is empty, wanted to use it for back-ups.

So I can just format the C:\ partition? Should I do the games too, because of the registration things??

My dad once wanted to format 1 partition but accidentily did everything. Will that be a problem, or was he just being stupid?

[Null]

you should format everything thats expendable. everythings easily replaceable. keep your game saves, but format the games them selves cuz they're easily reinstalled.


When you run the XP cd and goto the install. it has you select a partition, you just select C: tell it to delete, then tell it to install windows on the unpartitioned space.

[Canyarion]

Ok thanks... I'm afraid that I will lose my data...
I have 14 Gig of MP3 and movie data. :eek:

[Null]

just read carefully when you do it.