need help formatting friends comp

[karma112]

my friend lost his reboot disk to format his comp i was wondering how can you format his comp wihtout losing his windows xp and microsoft office you know the important files but formatting the rest plz help thanks.

 

[speed01]

You can NOT format part of a drive unless it's got more than one partition. Is there more than one partition on the drive?

Speed

 

[karma112]

hes wants for format the whole thing because hes got lot viruses adware etc on it but he doesnt have another copy of his xp disk so hes doent want to lose xp but hes thinking about buying p again and wouldnt it have a restore disk in it that would work?

 

[sivart]

if you format the drive (partition) with Windows installed (most of the time "C") then you will need a Windows XP disc in order to re-install the system. There is no way to format a drive and leave data. A format is completely erasing all the data on that drive (partition).

If he bought another copy of XP it should work fine. (assuming it is a retail copy and not manufacturer specific)

 

[mechBgon]

Microsoft Office will also have to be repurchased too. He should get a fresh set of restoration CDs from the system's manufacturer, if we're talking HP or eMachines or something else in the Happy Meal? bracket.

BTW if/when you do reinstall, beware of automagical worm infections: how to avoid them.

 

[karma112]

thanks alot guys i do believe his final plan is just to purchase xp he said he never bought it the first time just used someone else's disk so i slapped him in the back of the head for asking me what to do when it was obvious thanks again guys