How do I reformat my laptop?

Hey everyone, I recently had a problem with my laptop (Dell inspiron 1150 with windows XP) where everytime I logged on it would go straight to a blue screen. Eventually I managed to fix that so now I can start up my laptop again.

There are stil a lot of problems, my laptop freezes a lot, I cant open certain sites and other stuff like that, so clearly I still have a massive virus going through my computer.

I was talking to someone and they suggested that I reformat my laptop. Now I don't have any cd's that came with the laptop, but I do believe I have a copy of windows XP somewhere in my house. My question is how do I reformat my laptop with a windows XP cd, and will I lose anything important when I reformat (im not worried about files and stuff like that, its going to go on a USB, im more worried about drivers and things of that nature).

I would greatly appreciate any advice anyone has to give me. Thanks a lot everyone.

 

You will lose everything, including drivers and any other software that is copied onto the drive you format. You would be best-served by making sure you've got a complete set of everything you'll need, including drivers, before you do the reformatting.

 

UPDATE: Ive looked through all the CD's Dell sent me and I have three

One is Microsoft Office, another is the driver for the printer I got as well and the third is the installation for cyber dvd or whichever DVD program came with my laptop.

I don't have any other cd's and I really don't know what to do with all this "driver" talk.

 

ALSO:
My warranty has expired so I won't be able to get dell to send me any software.

 

Hmm, if you have a service tag can't you just go to dell.com and download all the latest drivers onto a USB drive?

 

You have no XP CD? In that case....hmm. Well, I'd still shoot Dell a call and tell them you got now XP CD with your laptop (unless it's still lurking somewhere you haven't found), and request they send you one. Can't hurt to try.

And yes, you should back up all your data. Drivers? Well, It's not exactly *essential*, because, if you have an ethernet connection, you should be able to use that to download the other drivers you need (recommend behind a router, if you don't want more viruses to start out with). And make your antivirus install and update snappy!

But all this is no use if you can't get an XP CD. If you can't, you should definitely try...say, you don't happen to have some sort of Dell recovery partition on there, do you? That could work. But you'd still need to back up personal data. Worth a check, though.

Yep. Don't even need a service tag...just select model.

 

I DO have a windows XP cd, i was just mentioning the Cd's that dell sent me, I have an old windows XP professional CD From a while ago....so basically i have the windows XP cd and the three cd's that dell sent me. Is that enough to reformat? I plan on putting the documents/files that I need on a USB key and then I can reinstall any programs I need. But if I just put in the windows XP cd and reinstall it, will that be ok?

 

Sorry, If I reinstall XP, and then have all the drivers downloaded from the Dell site, is that ok?

 

yes the only thing that is REALLY important is that you are able to install the network adapter driver so you can download all the new drivers for everything else, and also updating the network adapter itself.

 

alright that sounds good......im assuming I can download the network adapter off the dell site?

 

Yes, you can. Although I never do, because my ethernet works with the base Windows driver. But yeah, go to support.dell.com and follow the prompts for your model.

 

Here's the guide you want to re-install XP on a Dell

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=88032

The only thing I did different was download all the latest drivers from the Dell site and saved them to my D: drive. Once I had XP installed, I installed the drivers, programs, etc.