If I reformat

Heres the deal, just got my asus g1s, tried updating the intel chip set, but apparently someone on the forum sent me the wrong update so at the end of the install it said it failed to install correctly. I did a system restore to before i did the update...but I'd like to do a total reformat just to be sure...so my question is if you reformat your computer does it reset all drivers and updates of hardware to default? Everything seems to be fine, but I'm worried I may of broken something and want to give it a clean refresh.

 

If you reformat, you will have to reinstall the drivers, because with Windows' default drivers: performance could suffer / there could be stability issues / some devices might not even be recognized.

If you didn't notice any other problem after the failed install, then it is probably unnecessary to reformat. A proper installation failure shouldn't change anything, so system restore shouldn't even have anything to restore, and a reformat would be overkill. However, it is possible the failed install corrupted important files. But such a situation is generally very obvious when it happens (blue screens, freezing, crashing, booting errors, etc.)

I see you're on Vista... If you do reformat, you could switch to WinXP Pro ! haha

Should you want to optimize your PC's performance, I suggest you at least disable system restore. (Personnally I also change the shell to Aston, disable lots of services, change many registry settings, etc.)

Have fun with your new computer !