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Old 17th Mar 2005, 14:22
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5milesbaby
 
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I've done this recently myself and can be very straight forward. Make sure you have a list of all the product codes you will need after the reboot, ie ZoneLabs, ISP connection, Norton. Save all your data you want onto a CD, and note down or save the e-mail addresses you need. I fortunately printed out most of mine, as when I saved the address book it didn't save properly and couldn't be reloaded. Finally find all the disks you need for reload, most essentially the Restore Pack and Service Pack for windows that was supplied with the computer. When you are ready, and have a good few hours free, set the boot up sequence in BIOS to start from your disk drive, not hard drive. Insert the Restore Pack disk and restart again and a menu will appear giving choices of repairing, restoring etc. Follow the selections to do a full install, and when it comes to selecting to create a restore point, don't. Eventually it'll tell you that you may lose files needed for Windows, but as long as you have the Restart Disk, this doesn't matter. It'll also tell you several times that this will erase all saved data, just keep going as this is what you want to do. Somewhere it'll ask something about partitioning or something like that, don't create anything in anything already there, instead delete what you have to start again from fresh. My first time at re-doing XP took three attempts, but eventually I got there. Someone else will hopefully give you the proper names for the points it'll ask you to use/create or erase. I'm not very computer orientated but I managed it eventually, just make sure you have all the correct disks first, and then good luck!

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