Laptop, Starting again, formatting

[mark w]

Hi all.
Question for all you technical people.
My sony viao laptop is about 3 years old or so, it seems to have got increasingly slow, suspect it is messed up with all sort of rubbish, have run various sweepers etc. including hitman pro. But I think it is maybe time to start from scratch again, I created the rescue discs from when it was new and feel that now might be a good time to totally erase everything on the hard drive and start fresh. Obviously I would need to save all my important documents 1st, which I could save onto cd.
From doing this years ago with win95 I seem to remember somthing about a format command to fully wipe the hard drive before reloading from the rescue discs.
Can someone just briefly outline the process for me

Or alternatively is it easier to buy a new harddrive and fit that
Regards
Mark

[MattS]

Originally Posted by mark w

Hi all.
Question for all you technical people.
My sony viao laptop is about 3 years old or so, it seems to have got increasingly slow, suspect it is messed up with all sort of rubbish, have run various sweepers etc. including hitman pro.

It being a Sony Viao of that age I would be inclined to run some disk diagnostics before going to the trouble of a rebuild.

But I think it is maybe time to start from scratch again, I created the rescue discs from when it was new and feel that now might be a good time to totally erase everything on the hard drive and start fresh. Obviously I would need to save all my important documents 1st, which I could save onto cd.

Find the Profile and Settings transfer wizard and follow the promprs. Saving to a USB memory stick would be an alternative to a CD. Nothing wrong with a CD I am just a little impatient.

Be aware you will lose any applications that you have installed since buying the Laptop. Make sure you have the original installation sources for the ones you might want to use again.

From doing this years ago with win95 I seem to remember somthing about a format command to fully wipe the hard drive before reloading from the rescue discs.
Can someone just briefly outline the process for me

Formatting re-writes the basic magnetic arrangement of blocks and sectors on the disk erasing (well sort of) whatever was on the disk before. Formatting a Win32 (XP) system partition (disk) can be a bit of an arse and I personally would not bother when using a rescue disk. The rescue disk will effectively rewrite the basic arrangement of the disk up to the amount of space it needs to occupy - some do the whole disk it just depends on how the rescue image was prepared.

If you really want to clear a disk something like DBAN is a better option but it might interfere with the rescue disk operation.

Have fun

[Arfie]

Personally when doing a rebuild I get a boot disk, like BartPE or Ultimate Boot Cd and use one of the programs on there to reformat the disk in NTFS. I usually do a full format rather than just a quick format. Then use the rescue disks. Ther eis probably no good reason for it, but it seems to work OK for me.

As you've been warned though, you will need to re-install all the software again and you will no doubt lose something that you forgot to backup.

If you want to get a new hard drive, then do that and get a caddy for the old one. You can then keep the original files on it and get them off it as and when you like. When you're sure you no longer need anything off it, reformat it and use it for backups

Arfie

[jackdiver]

I have a Sony Vaio.

It was running like a complete dog until it I uninstalled one of the windows XP updates.

When I say like a dog, something like 15 minutes to start up, only one application could be run at a time, even then incredibly slowly.

I tried a variety of different diagnostic programmes but nothing showed up as a problem.

I eventually started uninstalling windows updates starting with the most recent first. Windows updates only, not the security fixes.

Unfortunately I don't remember which one (I made a note of the number, but have since binned it).

The one that caused the problem had it's hooks into every single component of the laptop. On re-booting the laptop XP had to reinstall every thing! (hardware only)
To be honest I thought I might have made a big mistake at first, but once it had 'found' all the hardware every thing was back to normal.

Not a single bit of data lost, running like it was when new.

I've since turned off windows up date...

[danphilly1984]

if you create a second partition on your hard drive you can save all of your important docs to that then just reformat the C drive where windows installs.
With my pc and laptop i always have windows and programs on one partition or hard drive and usually do a format reload every six months. It only takes about an hour on a vaio. When it is done turn on windows update and make sure you get all of the latest updates.

An earlier post has said that they turn off their updates but that really doesn't help, the fixes they bring out often repair previous ones that might not have worked how they wanted it to. The best thing to do is keep your pc updated not only with windows updates but other drivers like graphics, directx etc.

[mark w]

Assuming I decide to go down the route of using DBAN to totally eradicate the contents, then will my vaio recovery discs boot the system after its use and return the laptop to its new state.
Also I am guessing I need to change some setting to make the system boot from the cd.
???

[Manchester Will]

I also have a 3 year old sony viao.

I experienced a similar problem. ie running slow etc.

For me I uninstalled my anti-virus software and downloaded a newer version.

My old anti virus was updated dated daily, but the software version was 3 years old. I am informed by sony vaio e-mail help, that this makes a difference.

It worked very well for me. I used this Trend Micro ("PC-cillin") Internet Security 2008

Sony viao e-mail support is also free!

Hope this info is of help to you. A slow PC can be such a pain!