Complete system restore

hope i have used the exact words but basically i want to delete everything on my pc and start again, someone suggested you do this every year, i havent done it for 4 years and its the best way to get rid of rubbish, can someone remind me plz, thanks.

 

You definitely do not need to do a format every year.......or ever. Only time to format is when you are having issues that cannot be resolved by other means.

But firstly what is the Operating System? What's the rubbish you want to get rid of?

 

I agree its nice to start fresh form time to time. Even Microsoft suggests reformatting in many cases, as cleaning a system up can be tedious and cause conflicts with ugly workarounds. As far as once a year, that could be a little over the top, but i still think its user preference (i know people that do it 3-4 times a year...)

The easiest way to do this is to start by backing up all of the stuff you want to keep, and boot to your Windows CD. After setup loads, it will ask you to press Enter to install Windows, and list the hard drives and partitions on your system. you'd need to delete the windows partition, and then repartition and format the hard drive.

it sounds tough but Windows Setup walks you through it and does all the work... it will only take a few buttons to press on your part, and I'm sure there are huge walkthroughs all over online if you need help

 

I have tried to restore the operating system and all of its programs. I need to get past the cannot find operating system message. I thought I could just do a complete restore and solve my problem. It won't restore. I get an error message cannot open ghosterr.txt and then invalid destination drive. usage error 11030 this is an emachine T1105 with xp home. I didn't know how to submit this so I jumped in at this point this is my first time.