for Mar. 10, 2004

Hi, All;

This week: I want to reload Windows on my PC-- Should I?

I got a call from a client who had reformatted his hard drive and was reinstalling Windows. But now he could not get much to work. He felt that his machine had been infected with several different viruses and it had slowed to a crawl, so he felt that a Windows reload was the way to go.

After spending lots of time on the phone with him long distance, we got some things to work but his two-day investment of effort did not result in Windows finding his modem.

That is the issue with reloading Windows. Yes, it will clean your PC and make it run faster, and get rid of most but not all viruses. But reloading a fresh version of Windows can cause lots of problems, especially if the manufacturer loaded your PC. They have all the drivers and programs needed to run on their hardware. If they have given you a restore disk that reloads all the special drivers and programs, you are ahead of the game. But if you have to use a Microsoft original version of Windows, you may be asking for a long, trying time to get your PC to work again.

Should you reload? If you are not dependent on your PC and have several hours or days to work on it and have lots of patience and want to learn more about your PC, yes go ahead--back up your data and have at it. If it gets too challenging, you can always take it to a repair shop.

But if none of the qualifiers applies, try to clean up your PC with anti-virus and anti-spam programs, remove unused programs, and delete all temporary files that take up valuable hard disk space.

'Til next week, (ComputerFAQ#180)


Robert

 

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