please help me with reformatting

[Shorik]

So I have never reformatted my computer before and it got so overridden with spyware it was almost unusable. I finally tried to reformat, and installed the OS (xp home) but now when I boot up it gets to the 'welcome' screen and just freezes I dont know if there is something special you need to do when you format? I was just told to just format and then reboot with the xp disc and install.

Any help would be appreciated I dont really want to have to take it somewhere to get it fixed and spend $50

Thanks!

 

[Harvey]

You may have a boot sector virus. If you have a Win 98 boot disk, make sure it is set to Read Only, boot to it, and run FDISK /MBR to reset the manufacturer's Master Boot Record.

If you keep having problems, you may want to wipe out the whole NTFS partion on the drive before you let Windows set up your drive again. You can get DELPART.EXE. It's a real Microsoft utility that you can use from a bootable floppy to delete an NTFS partiton on your drive. Unless you have more than one partition, it will simply unformat your drive so it looks like a new drive to your installation disk.

Hope that helps.