Start from Scratch

[Surfboard]

My Computer is been freezing up and acting weird.
I just got the thing fixed at a computer place near my home. I don't have the time or $ to have them look at it again.

My brother told me I should start from scratch and do a zero low level format and reinitialized the hard drive.

I'm not sure how to get everything off the computer and do that. Can you help me out?

[Miz]

A true "low-level format" isn't done on modern hard drives so he's referring to writing zeroes to the drive.

Essentially the same thing can be accomplished by repartitioning and reformatting the drive then reinstalling Windows. You will be erasing everything on the hard drive so if you proceed, you will lose all your data...documents, pictures, address book, email, browser bookmarks (favorites), etc.

If you don't care about the data or have it backed up, instructions for repartitioning, reformatting and reinstalling start on this page (http://www.cybertechhelp.com/tutorial/article/how-delete-a-partition-using-fdisk). There's a link to the next step at the bottom of each page.