Laptop Cleaning part one

Well it is about to get rid of the old and bring in the new. From house cleaning to cleaning your computer, it must be done soon. My friends needed his laptop cleaned and reinstall Windows XP Home. I thought he would knew most of the basis but for his sake and other “critters” out there, I am there with some help and tips.

This first and important thing to do is to backup all your saved projects. If you have a DVD burner, CD burner, external hard drive, flash drive, IPOD or thousands of floppy drive (and a whole weekend), this is a priority to do first. From music, documents, videos, saved games and other stuff, you must preserve these precious things. My rule of thumb is to backup your backups. You will never know that you might lose it on your drive, scratch or shattered the CD or you might lose it. Take some time and pick up some extra CDs or DVDs to clone your saved stuff.
Now it is time to tackle your hard drive with a clean wipe of the system. There are two ways to clean your hard drive; one, you can load your Windows install CD and delete the partition first and then reinstall Windows. Two; I use a hard drive utility CD, such as Maxtor. Instead of using the quick clean, I let it write in all zeroes to ensure that the drive is a clean slate.
Finally, the most important installation, putting on Windows on your system; I have noticed if you purchase your system such as a HP, Compaq or Gateway, they will have their own install CD in the box. Most of them do not have the 30 days until shutdown clock. Well don’t look gift horses in the mouth, use their CD and then customize it to work with your needs.

(TO BE CONTINUED)