What's the best way to....

[Mikester]

What's the best way to wipe my computer??? I have Windows ME, and it's been giving trouble lately, a lot of trouble, and I just want to start over. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Addis]

Well to wipe your hard drive, you would format it and reinstall windows. However Windows ME is a terrible OS, so I suggest you upgrade to Windows 2000 or XP. ME is just 98 with a 2000 look and some extra features.

 

[Fred]

What's the best way to wipe my computer??? I have Windows ME, and it's been giving trouble lately, a lot of trouble, and I just want to start over. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Basically, make sure EVERYTHING that you want is backed up... to a disk or a server, or whatever you can come by. When you reboot, just boot to the disk of the operating system that you want to install. The operating system disk should format it for you, and then will install. Hope it helps!
*edit* Like Addis said, if you were thinking of reinstalling Windows ME, please reconsider it. It's a horrible OS, and you would do much better to install Windows 2000 (or especially a Linux OS, but that's another matter). Good luck!

 

[zRoCkIsAdDiCtInG]

id recommend just reformatting and after you resetup everything running it over with a window washer guttman pass that rewrites all deleted or existing "dead" files so that like absolutely no one can open them anymore

 

[Mikester]

Thank you all very much!!! I successfully formatted my hard drive, and I did unfortunately put ME back on, but it's an old computer, so I won't be using that much anymore... thank you guys for your help!!!

 

[Big B]

If you do go to Win2k or XP, you will want to do a clean install of the OS, not an upgrade. The Win9x line (which includes ME) code is vastly different than the NT code that Win2k and XP are based off of. Speaking from personal experience, this makes for a lovely Windows from hell.