laptop help

[raj]

can someone tell me how to wipe Everything off my laptop and just re-install windows vista? is this called formatting? or is that something else?

i have the windows vista disc to re-install.



also before i do this, am i ok in saving all the movies i have as data files and once ive re-installed windows copy them back to the laptop? i say this as making a data disc is a hell of alot quicker than burning each movie 1 by 1.

[James5]

Back in the old days with the original Win 3.1, 95, 98 se etc.. you used to have to go to the Dos prompt and do a format C: /S to wipe the hard drive but now with vista all you need to do is put the Vista disc in the drive reboot the PC and it will give you the option to install a clean copy this will format the HDD of all that is on it.

or if you still have a win 95/98 boot disc (floppy disk) you can put it in and do the format C: /s option so you know it has been done and then just put the vista disc in the drive and reboot.

(make sure the computer can boot from the DVD / CD drive)

And yes you can back your avi, mpeg etc movies up using the data disc option on Nero unless they are in DVD format.

[sphinX]

Put in ur vista cd, ur laptop shud boot from the cd, if not google "boot from cd vista", this will tell you how to make ur laptop read the cd first when starting up.

Then once this happens you can format you harddrive which will put a fresh copy of vista on it.

If you don't understand this, then google "formatting pc". Hope this helps