I would like to wipe the hard drive on my computer and perform a clean reinstallation of Windows XP Professional. What is the easiest way to “wipe” the drive? Also, are there any major pitfalls which you can foresee in a clean reinstallation?

Wiping the hard drive and completing a fresh reinstallation of Windows is a very good idea, since after a few years of operation there can be a significant build-up of old files and data on the computer which results in slowing operation. The only pitfall which I can foresee is the time involved and also the loss of data. The time is an easy obstacle to overcome, and I would say you could get the reinstallation procedure done within one day. However, you must be aware that wiping the computer will result in all data on the computer being removed, including all personal files. Therefore, it is essential that you backup all data that you wish to keep prior to undertaking this procedure. I suggest that you backup the data to an external USB drive, since this will be the easiest and most convenient way of backing-up the data. Then you can simply re-copy the data back onto your computer once the reinstallation has completed.

Moving onto the actual reinstallation process, the procedure you need to undertake will depend on whether your computer is a brand name machine with a recovery CD. If the computer has a recovery CD then it should be a simple case of booting off that recovery CD and the computer will automatically reinstall Windows and all device drivers. To boot off the recovery CD, insert that CD into the CD drive in the computer and then restart. If the computer does not boot from the CD you may need to complete some other configuration for this to occur, which is outlined in the procedure for booting off the Windows CD below.

In the event that the computer does not come with a recovery CD you will need to reinstall Windows from the actual Windows XP CD itself. However, before doing so it would be worthwhile to collect all of the required drivers for your computer. This is a good idea because when you install Windows from scratch it will likely not have all of your drivers installed, including things such as the network card which could prevent you from using the internet to download drivers. So, I would suggest that you download all of the latest drivers for the devices on your computer and copy them onto your backup drive so that they can be used once Windows is reinstalled.

Now that you have backed-up all of your data and collated all drivers, you can proceed with the Windows reinstallation. In order to wipe the drive you can simply format or re-partition the hard drive using the Windows XP Setup, as part of the reinstallation process. The Windows XP CD is a bootable CD meaning that you can boot the computer from the CD. This does not mean that you can run Windows XP from the CD, but instead when you boot from the Windows XP CD the Windows XP installer will launch, allowing you to install Windows. This should be as easy as inserting the Windows XP CD into the CD drive and then restarting the computer. When the computer performs its boot process it usually scans removable media to check whether there is a bootable disc within the drive and, if found, will proceed to boot from that disc. When the computer starts to boot from the Windows XP CD a message may appear on screen saying “Press any key to boot from CD”. This is designed so that if you have accidentally left the CD in the drive after installing Windows it will not automatically boot from the CD, but will instead ask whether you wish to use the CD to boot. If you do nothing (and ignore the message) it will time-out after approximately 5 seconds and then proceed to boot from the hard drive. However, if you tap a key in response to the message it will instead boot from the CD. However, if you find that the computer will not boot from the CD at all, and this message does not appear, then it is possible that the CD drive in your computer has been removed from the boot order. Most computers have this so-called boot order which specifies which devices will be scanned when the computer starts-up to check whether they can be booted from that source. Obviously the hard drive is always included in the boot order, since 99% of the time you will be booting the operating system installed on the hard drive. However, it is possible to remove other sources (such as CD drives, floppy drives, network cards for network booting) from the boot order to speed-up the boot process, since removing such sources means the computer does not need to scan those on startup, making the boot time faster. So, it is possible that the CD drive has been removed from the boot order. The easiest way around this issue is to specifically ask the computer to boot from the CD drive. When starting the computer you may see a message similar to “Press F12 for boot menu”. Pressing the nominated key will show a menu with all of the boot devices, allowing you to manually boot the CD drive. Alternatively, if your computer does not have a boot menu function, you may need to go into the BIOS setup (by pressing the nominated key when a message similar to “Press to enter setup” appears during the boot process) and set the CD drive to be included in the boot order. Unfortunately I cannot provide specific advice on how to modify this setting, since each computer has a unique BIOS setup. That said, I will provide the general advice that you should be very careful when modifying the BIOS since this is a critical part of the computer and any misconfiguration could result in the computer becoming unbootable. So it would be advisable to only change BIOS settings if you are comfortable with this process and make sure that you note down the original setting just in case you need to revert should things not go to plan. If you do decide to change the BIOS boot order setting then make sure you put the CD drive ahead of the hard drive in the boot order, as the computer generally runs down the boot order and stops when it finds the first bootable device (so if you put the hard drive ahead of the CD drive it will stop when it sees that the hard drive is bootable, since there is an operating system installed, and will never even look at the CD drive).

If you reach this point then I assume you have managed to boot the computer from the Windows XP CD and this has presented the Windows XP setup. Follow the prompts to the point where the setup asks on which drive you would like to install Windows XP. In particular, it will ask on which partition you would like to install Windows XP. A partition is essentially a division on the physical hard drive allowing you to have several different “logical” drives on the one physical hard drive. We won’t worry about creating new partitions or deleting existing partitions on the hard drive, but will just format (wipe) the hard drive partition where Windows is currently installed and reinstall Windows back onto that partition. In the list of partitions, select the one which currently has Windows installed – you should be able to tell from the total amount of space and the total amount of free space on the partition. Make sure you double-check that this is the correct partition, since formatting the wrong partition (e.g. a system recovery partition) could wipe other information that you don’t want to wipe! Once you are certain, look to the bottom of the screen which should tell you which key you need to press to format the partition. Press that key to commence the format. When asked how you would like to format the partition, select NTFS (quick format) as this is the file system that you want to use and a quick format is the most efficient way to format the drive. Once the format has completed Windows should automatically commence reinstalling and at this point just follow through with the prompts.

After Windows is reinstalled, and you have gone through all of the mandatory configuration screens, you should be presented with the Windows desktop. At this point you may have noticed that the graphics are quite large and maybe some devices (such as sound) are not working. This is because a clean installation of Windows does not reinstall all the drivers for the specific devices which are present on your computer. Therefore, you will now need to go through the process of reinstalling the drivers for these devices. Fortunately we had the foresight to realise that this had to be done and pre-downloaded all of our drivers to a USB drive so it should be a simple process of just reinstalling those drivers.

Now that you have finished the driver reinstallation you should restart the computer to ensure that everything has installed correctly. Once the computer has restarted it is also worthwhile to double-check that there are no devices which don’t have their drivers installed. Go to the “Start” menu then right-click on “My Computer” and select “Properties”. In the System Properties window, click the “Hardware” tab and then “Device Manager” button. This will show you a list of all devices which are connected to the computer. If any of the devices have a yellow exclamation icon this indicates that there is a problem with the device, most likely that it is missing the required driver. This diagnosis can be confirmed by right-clicking on the device and selecting “Properties”. In the Properties window that appears, select the “General” tab and under the “Device status” heading, it should confirm the problem about missing drivers. Now it is just a case of venturing onto the internet and downloading then installing the drivers for these devices.

Once all the device drivers have been installed your next order of business should be to install antivirus software on the computer and also perform a Windows Update. You can access Windows Update through the link on the Start menu. Regarding antivirus, for a free solution you could investigate AVG Free (free.avg.com) or for a paid solution ESET NOD32 (www.eset.com.au) is also a very good solution. It is important that you do perform a Windows Update and install antivirus software for the protection of your computer.

Finally, you can recommence copying all your personal data back to the computer together with installing any other software that is required on the computer.