trying to format HD

[longbedGTs]

My 9 month old Gateway is ungodly slow, so Im trying to format the HD in hopes of erasing whatever spyware type program that is making it so slow(IF thats what the problem is). Anyway, with the format disc in, I restart the comp and it does nothing! WTF? Isnt a menu supposed to pop up with the formatting options? Thats what it says on the disc anyway. Someone help before I set this thinig ablaze! :mad:

[bigredhead]

Have you done all the spyware progs like Ad-Aware .. Virus checker... etc etc etc.. first ?.. Don't format unless you have to.


otherwise..


Shut down...

Power up and hit " Delete " on the keyboard ( or F1 on some machines.. or sometimes ESC .. you will see a prompt when you boot up that says " Press XXX for Setup )

Look in the boot sequence.. and set it to either A , C , .... if you have a flopy disk .. or CD-Rom, C , ... if you have a bootable CD rom.

Save the settings.. and exit CMOS.. press SPACE bar when prompted.

What OS are you loading btw ?

[Somekindofjerk]

Or Google hard drive scrubber, that program is like a giant nuke for your hardrive.

Try defraging, spyware removal, and doing a disk cleanup

[longbedGTs]

The OS is Windows XP. I havent ran any spyware programs, but will try some first.
Yeah, Ive done a check disk, defragmenter, and disk cleanup, all with no results.
When I format, Windows is automatically reinstalled, right? Ive already saved all the important files to a disc. Thanks!

Oh, when I shut the comp down, a box pops up(you know...this program is not responding, click to cancel now...)and at the top it says 'zcom_ad'
Any ideas on that? :wondering

[wolfspider]

if you think you have a virus or spyware slowing you down, i highly recommend
www.grisoft.com for avg antivirus and spyware, there both free if you look hard enough on the website.
you could format your harddrive but reinstall of windows can go great or turn into a nightmare, if you`re a pc novice then i recommend trying everything else and use formatting as a last resort.
steve

[longbedGTs]

I went to download.com and got Spyware Doctor. I ran the check and it found 124 infections! All in cookies and temporary internet files! It wants me to buy the program to delete the files, but it showed their location as it was scanning, so I just went to cookies and TIF and deleted everything. Ill run the check again to make sure everything is gone. I hope that was the problem. :eek:

[bigredhead]

Go into the control panel.. click on " Add Remove Programs " and look for any AD-related programs you can remove... go into internet explorer.. " Tools " and " Internet Options " delete all TMP files and Cookies...

Reboot and then run AD-aware.. from downlod.com.. it's free and will let you delete the files without buying it..

[longbedGTs]

Ok, I ran the check again after deleting cookies and TIF. Its now down to 12 infections. While its scanning, it gets to a file named 'zyncosMark' and thats when it starts finding infections. Funny thing is, I searched for the file 'zyncosMark', and it doesnt find it. Hmmm.
I went to add/remove programs and everything there was legit. Ill update this thread after I reboot and get Ad-aware. Thanks for the help!

[3 weelin geezer]

I did just that with my computer last week. I put in a new 500 GB drive as D:\ and I put all my important pictures of my trip to Japan thinking they would be safe because it would format the C:\ drive. Well guess what? I didn't disconnect that drive and windows decided to make it the C:\ drive instead of the original 120 GB and it erased all those pictures, videos, and videos of my puppies and of me bumpfiring my AK like some nutter which they are still on YouTube.com though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RoTXzgHS48

[renotrikeguy]

I just re-installed XP home on my Dell pc last weekend. If you have the factory XP disc all you need to do is put the disk in the cd drive turn off the pc and then turn it back on. Your XP disc will ask you if you want to remove disc partitions and format the drive. Choose yes. Then just let it do all the work.

My pc had three seperate installs of XP on it from botched installs. My poor 160 gig drive was chocked down to 100 gig's. Now everythis seems to be running good again.


Good luck on your install.. Chris / Renotrikeguy

[3 weelin geezer]

Thats nothing. My laptop was down to 2 gigs ...Until I got rid of the porn movies. :) Uh, did I say that out loud?