Is your computer too clogged up with junk? Are you infected with a virus or spyware you can’t remove? Feeling that your system is a little slow and want to make it look new? Well, well, well, it’s time to reformat your hard disk.

Why should you waste money and time sending your CPU to a shop to reformat it when you can do it yourself? It’s easy as ABC! All you need to do is to follow my simple step-by-step process. Oh, and by they way, this can also work if you bought a brand new hard disk.

1. First, prepare 2 diskettes and your Windows installation disk. Yes, a CD to install Windows, any version you like.

2. Next, download these two files: Disk 1 & Disk 2 and unzip its contents to each of your two diskettes. Label them respectively. This is the partitioning software.

What is partition?
(v) To divide memory or mass storage into isolated sections. In DOS systems, you can partition a disk, and each partition will behave like a separate disk drive.
- www.webopedia.com

3. Now back-up everything that is most dear to you: your personal documents, your favourite episode of Desperate Housewives, and your Miami vacation photos. You either burn them into CDs, transfer them into a seperate hard disk, anything you like. Just make sure that you can afford to lose all your data in the hard disk that you’re gonna reformat.

4. At this point, you might want to print the rest of the intructions, your computer will go into a point of no return. Insert Disk 1 and restart your PC.

5. Just in case your boot sequence is tampered with, press F8 while your PC is starting up, before windows loads. Make sure your floppy drive boots before your hard disk does. E.g:

1. Floppy drive
2. CD-ROM device
3. IDE hard drive
4. Other devices

Some computers may have different ways to access its boot sequence, instead of pressing F8. If F8 does not work, try getting into Setup, usually with F2 or Del.

6. Now restart your PC. Insert Disk 2 when you’re asked to. Partition magic 7.0 will load. Here, I have experienced a non-responsive or faulty cursor before, so if it happens, redo steps 4-6 if you can’t work with just the keyboard.

Fyi, you can get around without the mouse by using Alt, Tab, Enter and the arrow keys.

7. Right now, you should be seeing “Disk 1″ on the top left corner of the screen. If you have 2 or more hard disks installed in your CPU, select the one you wish to reformat. Just in case you don’t know which is which, your primary hard disk, where you have windows intsalled, is usually Disk 1. Take note of the disk size or partitioning if you’re still unsure.

8. Once the disk is selected, look at the main body of the window. If you only have one partition, (C:), you will only see one line on it. If you have 2, (C: & D:), you will see three. In this case, the second line only indicates that the following drives are ‘extended’ from the main portion of the disk. Now, select the first line, right click it and delete. Do the same to the other drives of the same disk, unless you want to leave them alone. But since you’re reformatting your entire drive just delete everything.
Note: Deleting the main partition will remove everything, along with your Windows installation.

9. Alright then. There should only be one line left. Right click on it and create. Select the format you wish to use: NTFS (New Technology File System) or FAT32 (File Allocation Table). What’s the difference? Well, basically NTFS is a more complicated format than FAT or FAT32. For simple users like us, it does not matter hence there is no difference. For now, lets choose NTFS unless you have been told otherwise.

10. Here comes the sizing of the disk. If you only want one drive, it is only reasonable if you put all of your disk space into it. If you want two drives, then you can control the size of your C: from here.

Tip: If you download lots of stuff, like music and movies, split your disk into 2 parts: C: & D:. Resize C: to, oh say, 20GB to install windows and leave the rest to D: to store all of your downloads. Tip courtesy of Kishan Jasani.

11. Got it? Once you’re done with the sizing, click OK. Don’t forget that your C: is Primary but the other drives will be Logical. However, the ‘Extended’ portion will still be Primary even though its contents are Logical, don’t get confused. Back at the main body, you will see how you have configured your hard disk. Check it carefully.

12. Once you’re happy with the partitioning, the sizing, and everything, fininsh the job by clicking on the Apply button below. After the process runs and is done, you will be thrown back to MSDOS. Voila! Your hard disk is virtually empty. Then, you can proceed to install windows with your CD. Insert the CD and restart; if the setup appears, skip step 13-14. If it doesn’t, proceed to 13.

13. If your Windows installation CD is not bootable, you need to run MSDOS first. You can do this right after reformatting, since you’re already at DOS mode. Did you restart your PC? Whoops, then you have to insert disk 1, remove it when it asks for disk 2 and press any key. Do not insert disk 2, and you’ll eventually wind up at DOS (A black screen with just words, like in Lost or The Matrix 1).

14. You will start off at A:\>. Switch directories to your CD-ROM drive by typing “D:”. If you partitioned a logical drive then it will be an “E:” depending on how many drives there are in your hard disk. Once switched, type ‘dir’. It will list the contents of the CD. Look for the installation file, it should be someting like “SETUP.EXE”. Type the filename of the file you identified and press enter.

15. Right now you should be looking at the setup process of windows. From this point, you should be able to handle things. After installing windows, congratulations, you have a clean system.

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