KG's computer question of the week.

[KG]

i want to give my old computer to my sister. the OS is XP. it's got some glitches and some, um, personal stuff on it.

how can i clean it up? i got the recovery disks, should i just reinstall XP with those?

thanks in advance for any advice.

[ET Awful]

1. If by recovery disk you mean a complete image of the computer

as it was when you bought it, then yeah, the best tihng you can do is reinstall the whole works. It'll run smoother and wipe out the "personal" stuff. :)

[purr]

2. I'd do the recovery..

not hard to do at all.. If I remember correctly from a computer that uses recovery discs , it gives you an option to erase and rewrite information or just to reinstall an application. You want to click on that.

[Maestro]

3. With XP it is a no-brainer

Just back-up what you want. Then go into the BIOS and make sure that in your boot sequence, the cd-rom drive where you are going to place the original XP disk, is listed first. Stick the CD in and follow the on-screen instructions. Quite simple. Enjoy.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. Reinstallation alone...

Will not get rid of the "personal stuff". During the installation process, you will be prompted with a question regarding formatting the drive. If you really want to get rid of that stuff, forever, for mat the drive and do a fresh install. Nothing else will clean it up as well.

[KG]

5. ok, that what i wanted to know.

reformatting is basically what i'm wanting to do. wasn't sure if the recovery discs did that.