A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

Wiping older XP computer clean - blondie

Posted: Dec 30, 2011

I have an XP computer that I no longer use. I have a Vista I am currently using. The XP had gotten slow, was freezing up constantly, etc. On Vista, you can wipe the hard drive clean back to its condition when it was new, but I believe you have to have the CD to do this on XP. Does anyone have any suggestions of how I can start over with the XP if I don't have a CD to do it? I would like to get the computer hooked back up and have 2 computers.

restore option - Happy MT Robin

[ In Reply To ..]
I have an HP and so this may be specific only to this particular brand, but when you are booting the computer up, at the very beginning for about 5 seconds there is a black screen that has options for you to hit such as F10, F12, etc. One of those usually says restore function. You have to be quick and basically hold down that function key, but that brings up the restore function that is located on a locked partition on your hard drive. This will restore it to the factory defaults.

CCleaner - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
I think CCleaner, formerly known as Crap Cleaner, from Piriform Software, will do it for you. Even if you already it, you will benefit from using CCleaner every week or few days. It eliminates the letover mess that slows everything down.

Look it up on Wikipedia. It is free with the full version for a small cost. Easy to use. Effective. Safe. I swear by it, as do a lot of computer people I know.

Even if you already fixed your computer, get this to keep it clean and fast. I use it on an XP and can really tell the difference if I forget to run it for a few weeks.

After doing that, also remember to optimize your hard drive for better performance--defragment it. This is different than reformatting. Defragmenting just rearranges the information so like is with like. It allows faster access for better performance.

CCleaner - THANK you!!

[ In Reply To ..]
I have an old laptop with XP that I used to keep as an emergency backup for work, but the darned thing had gotten so slow that I thought about just getting rid of it or giving it away. With nothing to lose, I tried CCleaner, as you suggested. Now it runs perfectly and quickly! Thank you SO much! :)

CCleaner - THANK you...p.s.

[ In Reply To ..]
Oh...by the way...that old laptop with XP? I suppose I could have restored the laptop to its factory configuration (I have the disks somewhere) but I also had my Stedman's dictionary and drug book on it and would have lost those. I had planned to restore factory settings if I ended up giving it away. You saved me some $$$ :)

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