Wiping everything??

-Corkie-

Hi folks.

My PC is really annoying me latley and even after playing around with settings I am still having a load of problems so I am going to wipe everything and start again.

I want to backup my itunes music and pictures but my 8GB memory stick aint big enough. Can I divide my HDD to add a partition for a backup or will that be deleted as well???

Also whats the best way to wipe everything???

Cheers.

JonathanAnon

What problems are you having... A lot of issue are usually caused by installed third party applications, or possibly viruses/spyware/malware.. What exactly is happening?

-Corkie-

JonathanAnon wrote: »

What problems are you having... A lot of issue are usually caused by installed third party applications, or possibly viruses/spyware/malware.. What exactly is happening?

I cannot use IE explorer 9 at all. I cannot access some sites such as AIB etc. I switched to Firefox and thats having problems aswell.

JonathanAnon

-Corkie- wrote: »

I cannot use IE explorer 9 at all. I cannot access some sites such as AIB etc. I switched to Firefox and thats having problems aswell.

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser at the moment.. Download this and give those sites one final try.. It sounds like it's just sites with SSL (i.e. sites that you need to securely log in to).. there may be something wrong with the Crypography Services or some other part of the Windows config.. Also have you tried rebooting your router (assuming you have one)..

-Corkie-

I have tried all that. I just want to backup my Itunes and pictures now and get rid of all the crap on my PC.

ShooterSF

If you have a recovery Disk or partition then I believe that will wipe all partitions and put the drive back to factory settings(though I may be wrong) If you have a windows disk you can install to a specific partition but you will want to make sure you have the drivers for the machine.

There was a topic in bargain alerts that mentioned some free online backup sites you could also check out. Dropbox, SugarSync, Skydrive and Amazon (something or other ) have all free accounts.

-Corkie-

I have no partiton on the HDD. Can I make one now??

TouchingVirus

JonathanAnon wrote: »

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser at the moment.. Download this and give those sites one final try.. It sounds like it's just sites with SSL (i.e. sites that you need to securely log in to).. there may be something wrong with the Crypography Services or some other part of the Windows config.. Also have you tried rebooting your router (assuming you have one)..

It isn't...

-Corkie- wrote: »

I have no partiton on the HDD. Can I make one now??

Your drive might have a hidden partition, one that doesn't have a letter assigned to it. This is where the manufacturer would store a snapshot of the drive before they boxed it, so when you use a recovery disc it will just copy from the hidden partition to your old one, restoring it to the way it was when you bought it. It's really only applicable to laptops in my experience and doesn't help with your predicament of backing up what you have.

You can burn your files to DVDs which would help solve your problem. I'd suggest this for the novice, and make use of the recovery functionality if you have it. If you want to be a bit more adventurous you could use Windows Disk Management to try shrink your active partition, which will free some space on the drive where you can make a new partition and copy your files before wiping the active partition and reinstalling Windows. If you cannot shrink the current active partition enough to store your files you'll have to get another storage device like a USB hard drive or DVD media to store your files.

It's good practice to wipe Windows machines once a year IMO, think of it as analogous to a car service

-Corkie-

Cheers. How do I make a partiton???

TouchingVirus

Press Windows key + r and type diskmgmt.msc

Make sure you know what you're at - google