Reformat Question

I have just taken over this cpu from my daughter ( bought her a laptop) and would like to clean things up. Dell has sent someone out to replace the drive in it and it works fine now ( It wouldnt read any disk ). When you reformat do you need to reinstall everything that is on here? Such as internet and mail? I also wanted to ask now that the drive is fix could I back up whats on here now and burn it on a disk ( incase of further problems). I have all the cds that came with this dell desktop. Thank you for any info.

 

Format erases everything, it's like buying a completely new PC. That means you have to reinstall internet and mail and such.
You can backup on CD, but do not backup installed programs. Only backup program installers and your personal documents. Backing up programs that are installed (that is, copying the 'c:\program files\<program>' folder to CD) and putting them back after the format will cause them to malfunction. You have to reinstall.
Make sure the Dell CD's can install windows. A lot of computer companies do not ship the OS on a cd.

 

There is a cd that came with the cpu Step by Step: Setting Up Microsoft Windows XP . Im not very good with computers but it does have an xp install. My isp should be abel to help setup most this lost then. (I hope LOL) Thank you for the info.