can u format ur hard drive and.......?

Question

i got a virus so i want to format my hard drive and start everything over.will this get rid of the virus? will it uninstall windows?if it does how do u install it?please give advise and give instructions..thanks

also how do i identify the virus

Answer 1

Youre asking for more troubles than you already have! People who tell you to reformat are idiots! You will be lookin for drivers for a month, wonderin why your graphics and sound wont work, and lastly, wonderin where all that software you use to have went! Get rid of the virus with some removal software, if you know what the virus is, go to the symantek website and download the removal tool! After you are all done, learn why you got it in the first place! I bet you are a P2P user.....

Answer 2

Based on your question I would recommend you take it to a professional. Reformatting a drive WILL wipe out windows and everything else, including your data. And it does not guarantee that you will get rid of the virus, since you could have a boot sector virus for example. (You can usually clear those with a dos disk with fdisk by booting from floppy and issuing command "fdisk /mbr" if I recall, but that's another story.)

Then you have the issue of reinstalling Windows which can sometimes be a bear.

Save yourself some grief and take it to somebody that knows how to handle the problem.

Good luck.

Answer 3

it is easy to format ur hard drive .but i think u should only format the drive where ur current windows setup is there and where it is running .coz the virus will be there on that drive only .u can format ur drive by inserting that cd of xp or any of the operating system and go as directed then u will get a option where it will ask u do u wish to format the drive u should select the quick format and then go ahead but complete the full setup. if u dont do that ur comp will not run coz u have formatted the drive where ur os is.and using the software will make ur computer slow now.you can use anti virus software after formatting .and the people who are telling to format are not idiots .coz i am computer engineer and i know wat to do and wat not

Answer 4

Hi. Formatting your drive gets rid of everything. Then you start over and the virus will be gone. (The drive can still be analyzed and data recovered by an expert, but most folks would not know how to do this.)

Answer 5

Losing data on a hard drive is the worst nightmare of any computer owner. However, some hard drive problems can be easily fixed yourself by using easily available tools. I found the info at http://fixit.in useful

Answer 6

get a friend to make a windows 98 boot disk - put it in (if you dont have a floppy drive then ...) - at command prompt on boot disk type fdisk - delete partition - do it twice (sometimes it will ignore you) - create partition - make partition active - esc,this will put you back to command prompt - type format c: (if it says drive not recognized, restart) - format c: - if it still wont recognize it just put in windows xp (or whatever) disk - when it asks to format say yes (fdisk on boot disk will format in "fat32", but windows xp will format it to ntfs, so dont worry about that, when you installed windows put boot disk back in and fdisk to make sure you have only 1 partition (when in boot disk if your file system is ntfs, press 4 (or 5,cant remember-whichever one says delete non-dos partition / fat 32) --windows 98 is in fat32 - (which is dos) /// windows xp is ntfs (non-dos)