I formatted my computer, okay? To clean out the junk, to clear some space. Well, during the format at like.. 14%, the power went out in the house. Came back up about five minutes later, so I turned my PC on. First I tried to load the PC normally, but it refused to go past the Windows XP window. So.. I manually shut the PC down by holding the button. Went back, at the first little window I held F10 till it took me to the format window, where I formatted it. Went through this time.

Now... everything was okay, like a new PC and all. The computer worked for a while, and then the Internet Explorer begun to take like.. 10 seconds to come up after double-clicking the logo, and once it did come up it didn't load any pages. I either got a "Page Cannot Be Displayed", "Action Cancelled" or instead of the little address window at the top saying Yahoo.com it would say something like... "c:\WINDOWS\blahblahblahblahfuckyou". SOMETIMES it'll work when it's like that, but it loads the pages incredibly slowly, and eventually just crashes.

And then the pop-ups started. Things saying I had a virus, and that I had to go to some website to download a critical fix for my Windows, and that normal anti-virus software won't correct it. MicrosoftRepair.com, win-fix.com and Updatenow.org are three of the websites I got. They'll let you download a Spyware remover for free, and after getting it it'll scan your PC. But it won't remove the spyware it found until you register, which costs money.

Eventually, Norton Antivirus 2002, which came with the PC, picked up and said it had found a virus. Bloodhound.W32.EP was it's name, and it's at C:\WINDOWS\temp\naufnauf.exe. I just reformatted my PC.. AGAIN, since it works after formatting but only for an hour. It'll eventually fuck itself again. There's only like.. 7 things in the temp folder. Before I formatted I looked, and there was like 20 things in the folder where there are now only 7. So the virus must cram a lot of stuff into that folder.

Could it be that this is a different modem in my PC than what it had when I first bought it? The modem fried a couple of months ago and I had to get a new one and install it. Could that be a reason why the internet is messed up?

I am never, for as long as I live, formatting a PC ever again. Please help me.

actually

i would suggest formatting the PC again.

You got XP?

stick the XP cd in, and ask it to format and reinstall (make sure you have your data saved). Formatting your PC once a year is a very good thing to do.

If youve got a massive amount of time then i guess so - but its hardly practical for me

hunh? it takes less than an hour.

formatting a computer once a year is an excellent thing for its health. Over the year, a hard drive ends up creating too many inconsistencies inside itself, slows down and creates errors that can become very annoying, specially when you're on the net. 1 hour a year is not massive amounts of time.

I feel dumb for asking, but I want to make sure:

1) what is formatting?

2) Does it delete files, programs, etc.?


3) How is it done?


I'm not sure if what I think it is is in tune with what it really is.

Formatting erases everything on your hardrive and reinstalls the operating system back. you should always back up important files and documents before you do it as they will be lost.

To do it, you just have to place the cd that came with your computer (i dunno what the official name for that thing is.. recovery cd i think) and restart it with it in. Then it will ask you if you want to format and it will delete and reinsall only what's in the cd.

It's nice to do it.. but it sucks if you have illegal copies of htings like Word bc then you have to download it again or ask a friend again for them.

The pop-ups you're getting have to do with the brand new Windows installation not being shielded by a firewall. Install Windows XP Service Pack 2 from Microsoft Update site.

There are two kinds, low level (this is done in the factory, your hard is circular, an dit gets spil;it up into sectors and platters)) and high level format (what the poster above did) sets up a file system, in Windows that is either FAT32 or NTFS. and flags any bad sectors so nothing gets written their



Sort of, once you format you are nto getting nay data back unless you take to a computer foresenics expert or have access/knowledge of hteir tools/software...but what you can get back is iffy.

When you format kiss anythign you ahve not backed up goodbye, but if you were criminal and formatted your computer to erase data, the police may still be able to retrieve some of it, depending on how through you were.



I high level format is done by using the format command in DOS.

such as: format C:\

Yes this is the best thing to do. I usually reboot my PC about once every 6 months. I've had the same PC for the last 3+ years and it still runs just as good as the day i brought it.

best thting to do whenever you're reinstalling (or installing) windows for the first time is to always create a partition. I cannot stress on this enough. Have a complete partition where your data resides as opposed to your programs. Programs after every reinstallation require you to install them again. Data does not. It saves the headache of backing stuff up. This way, anytime you reformat, you only hae to reformat the partition that holds your OS.

Heh, everything's working fine now. I formatted it AGAIN, and this time when making the Internet connection I allowed the Microsoft Firewall to be on. Been working perfectly fine for the past four hours.

if you have troubles again ... make sure when you re-format you delete the old partitions!

just smash your computer with a sledgehammer. it won't fix the problem but it'll make you feel a heluva lot better

Oh, I'm waiting until the day I get my new computer. When I get a new computer, I'm just gonna slam the crap out of this one.

nice \:D/ :rock: