[Sharkz]

lately my computer is running slower than usual, i've done a de-frag, searched for spyware and viruses and i have alot of space left on my hardrive. normally when i double click on say internet explorer, it comes up immediantly, but now it takes a while for programs to start. also, while playing games it lags from time to time, which it normally never did in the past. i found a PowerQuest image file on my computer which is a backup of my c drive, but i dont know how it works. is there either a way to replace my current c drive with this backup image, or a way to completely restore my computer to as if its brand new?

thanks for the help.

[talldude123]

sorry for the late reply.

As long as you have a CD-RW or DVD-RW drive, you can restore all of your personal data (music, documents, favorites, etc) and re-format your PC.

This gives you the "new" windows experience, and gets rid of all your junk.

Here is a guide to reformatting Windows. It takes about 1-2 hours, and you'll have to reinstall drivers after.

[Sharkz]

i seemed to have hit an iceberg. i have all of the nessessary disks and numbers to reformat, but i am having trouble with that 2nd step. i put the disk in my CD-ROM drive, then after a while the screen comes up and i close it. then i reboot the computer, and it doesnt come up with "press any key to boot from cd". i then tried the solutions in 2)a and 2)b but they dont work. any way to fix this?

[wasisnt]

So your computer is set to boot from the CD first and not giving you the option to boot from CD? What CD are you using? An actual Windows CD or a recovery CD?

[Sharkz]

its a purple disk that has Reinstallation CD Microsoft Windoed XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 on it.

[kaname]

Is your CD Drive your first boot device in your BIOS?

EDIT* Nevermind, sorry, I read the posts but it didn't register in the brain. What programs are running in your system tray?