Formatting Laptop for the first time

Thread title says it all - been meaning to do this for a while now but have kept putting it off. My current laptop has been getting slower and slower and I need to clean it up some. Thought I'd seek out some more experienced advice before tackling it myself though - never done this before on any pc.

So other than needing the OS cd nearby, anything else you guys recommend I do? I've already backed up all my documents/other necessities and was wondering if there'd be anything else I might have missed. Any help would be much appreciated, even if it's just sending me to a walkthrough online!

 

Go ahead and download the drivers and put them on a flash drive or cd... I've found that helps a lot.

 

Can you give us a hint of the notebook you have? O/S, size, type, model of HD and what kind of use you put your computer to?

You may want to partition it to save yourself from having to move the data off before you do an re-install next time?

Give us some more info, we may be able to offer something useful back.

Cheers!

 

Sure thing - my bad! Should have been the first thing I did!

It's an Asus F3JP laptop with Vista 32-bit and 2 80Gb harddrives - I used to play games on it but should be upgrading soon to the just announced G73JH-A1. Mainly using MS word and the internet at the moment - although it would be nice to actually see the X1700 card perform how it's supposed to - I've never managed to reach the performance online benchmarks say this thing is supposed to have

 

Are your two 80GB HD's in RAID? Or do you have two 80GB partitions? Just checking!

 

Done nothing to them so assume it's 2 separate ones! 5400rpm I think - it's a pretty old laptop and I never did anything to radically change/improve performance since purchase

 

They may have come like that from the factory.

Right click on Computer, click Manage, select Disk Management and see if you have a Disk 0 with two partitions (may be more, if there is a hidden Recovery partition) or if there is two HD's; Disk 0 and Disk 1.

 

Done - Disc 0 with two partitions amounting to 150GB in total. So only one drive then, my mistake!

 

If you have a retail Vista DVD you could try creating a new Vista DVD with intergrated drivers from DriverPacks.net.

But i too recommend getting all the drivers before reinstalling Windows.
Just right click on the "Computer" icon and select manage.
On the right side locate device manager and click it.
Now you got a list on every peice of hardware the notebook uses.

But the easiest method would be to check out Speccy, made by the same company that gave us CCleaner and Defraggler.

 

What I would suggest is possibly upgrade the HD if the (smallish) cost is not objectionable to you. Definitely recommend the new Hitachi 7K500, but even a Scorpio Blue 500GB model will be an performance upgrade over your stock HD.

What this option offers is that if you can't get the install 'right', right away, then you can always put in the original HD and continue working until you have more time to spend on the issues you might face.

If investing a little in this computer is agreeable, then you may also want to consider upgrading to Win 7 x64 if you have maxed out the RAM already in your notebook to 4GB. Along with the new HD, this may negate the need for the new computer, at least for a little while longer. (Not, of course, if you are buying the new notebook specifically for gaming - then, of course, the new computer will still give a better overall experience, but at a much higher cost too).

The first thing I would do is make sure the BIOS is updated and all the firmware for all the hardware is updated too. Before you install a new (or the same) O/S.

See for drivers:
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us


Then, from the same link above, download all the latest drivers for your notebook and save them on a USB stick. Note that if you are doing a clean install (for example to Win 7), then the install order of drivers matters - see if you can find any Asus recommended install order guides for their products.

Also note that if you do decide to bring this computer to Win 7 x64 capabilities, the Vista x64 drivers will be compatible with Win 7 x64.

For around a couple of hundred dollars, (assuming you have 4GB of RAM currently, or can get it inexpensively) this notebook will see at least a few more years of life, if you're so inclined.


See for the Hitachi 7K500 500GB model:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145275

See for the Hitachi 7K500 320GB model:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145274


Hope some of this helps, but ask for more if I am guessing in the wrong direction for any of the above.

Cheers!

 

DEagleson,

That's a good tip for 'speccy'! I just played with it and besides the clickable CPU graphs it offers, along with the date of the O/S install, I was most impressed with the way the information was/is presented.

I recommend to download the 'portable' version - no install necessary.

Cheers!

 

well once u have got the drivers downloaded and saved to a cd or usb drive and started with new installation create new partitions on the hard disk and install ur OS on one of them would help u manage ur stuff in future

 

taj619,

Yeah, I take that route, maybe to an extreme. But with more than 2 dozen computers that I personally 'take care of' this is the easiest system I've found.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=443342

 

Thanks for all the advice, much appreciated!

I'm not going to upgrade anything though - the reformatting is just so I can get it back up to speed before I inevitably sell it on ebay. Getting my new laptop in just over a month so anything else would seem excessive.

So basically I just need to back up my files and put the updated drivers on a USB beforehand? No other hidden extensions or the like that I might need to save before deleting everything?

 

WAIT!!! Stop the presses!

You're selling this? Well, that changes everything!

What I would do then is COPY my data over to a safe place(s) - external HD or USB stick or both.

Then I would download ccleaner and enable the option to do a secure erase of 7 times or more.

Then, I would delete the data. If you enabled the option properly in ccleaner, this will take a long time (it should).

Then I would do a 'recovery' install.

Then, well, then I would sell it.

If you don't have the time to verify the new drivers will work, then don't get yourself in a potential mess by selling it with them installed.

You may want to download them as a courtesy to the seller, but I would leave them on the second partition and let them decide if they want to install or otherwise bother with them.

Cheers!

 

Thanks! Is a recovery install different to me putting the OS disc back in and doing it that way I presume? And I'm guessing ccleaner would handle the data deletion you mentioned after the full 7 times erase (or is that an extra step and I'm misreading things?).

That was all a massive help - just what I was after, thanks! I'll probably still do the driver updates though - give me something to do and keep me occupied while I wait for my new laptop.

 

I'm pretty sure the O/S disc will be a 'recovery install' - it will put the computer back to the time you bought it new. Do you have a separate 'driver' disc or 'software' disc too? If you do, I would not use them - use the downloaded drivers from the link I gave before.

Yeah, if you've got a month till you get rid of this one, that should be enough to know that the drivers are stable.

Now, ccleaner, when set up like that will do a 7 pass over write when you delete anything. So, you do have to delete something first. This is why you want to COPY your data over to an external HD or USB key. If you move it, ccleaner will have nothing to 'wipe'.

Are we good?

Cheers!

 

I have both a recovery and a full OS disc so will go with the former option then?

So with ccleaner, I delete everything first (it's all been copied already) and then use it? It won't delete anything for me?

Other than that, yeah, we're good, thanks!

 

Yes, I would use the recovery disk.

With ccleaner, set the option first,

then delete (this will take a long time if you've selected the 7 times or higher over write option).

Sorry I wasn't clearer on my original post.

Cheers!