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Im going to wipe and start over......

post #1 of 20
9/9/04 at 8:23pm
Thread Starter 
So what EXACTLY do i need? How many components do i need drivers for, and where do i find them? Will i autoboot from a CD? What programs will i need to reinstall? DO i just put all drivers on a CD? Do i need drivers for the CD/DVD player? Pop ups have somehow overnite taken control of my computer, so i feel the only way to rid of them is to start with a clean slate.
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post #2 of 20
9/9/04 at 8:48pm
sypbot search and destroy, sypsweeper and adaware. use these to to sweeps, the first two you can keep running to protect u when ur on the net. also have norton antivirus and personal firewall running. i never go on the net without all 4 running.
somewhere in the alienware forum is a freeware post (its huge) with a listing of all the cool freeware that removes these as well as others, and other freeware

if its only popups that the problem i wouldn't go formatting anything just yet. (that said i recently formatted my computer for something similar - but my computer had it coming! )
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post #3 of 20
9/9/04 at 8:50pm
You will have to back up all your drivers, put them on a cd or external hdd. If you dont have and cant find them, it's ok, Windows will use generic drivers during installation. Once Windows is installed, use Windows Update to upgrade all the drivers that Windows used during installtion or go to your laptop manufacturer's website to search for the upgraded drivers.

All the programs that Windows needs to run should be installed automatically.

Use Mozilla Firefox ! No popups !
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post #4 of 20
9/9/04 at 9:12pm
nice username, get it? haha i kill me

no that is a cool username
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post #5 of 20
9/9/04 at 9:43pm
Thread Starter 
yea well, i have SpyBot, Adaware and norton running and its not helping at all. The computer has literally slowed to a crawl in 24 hours and its driving me nuts

As far as the reinstall goes, if i WERE to screw anything up, could i send it back to Dell and have them reinstall it under warranty?
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post #6 of 20
9/9/04 at 11:28pm
you wont screw anything up.

ALL you need is directx 9 and the video drivers.

everything else is on the cd's that are provided by dell. Just install the home edition winxp and that'll get you up and running.

I've done it twice on my dell and probably over 500 times on other machines, easily done.
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post #7 of 20
9/10/04 at 12:58am
i agree if you do plan on doing it, don't let it intimidate you. back ur stuff up shove xp in, boot from it, allow it to format the disk and start the install. if your unsure theres a great tutorial at www.blackviper.com , just look for installing xp os. it even has pix for all 23 or so steps ...
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post #8 of 20
9/10/04 at 1:11am
Thread Starter 
nice, thanks guys. i have regained semi-control, enough to last till i get to school. i have a few more-savy-then-me friends down there who ill get to standby on the wipe. also dont want my dad to know ive already screwed up another computer, hehe
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post #9 of 20
9/10/04 at 4:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by SurfJungle
nice username, get it? haha i kill me

no that is a cool username

Hehe I love Stewie.
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post #10 of 20
9/10/04 at 4:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by norcalz71
nice, thanks guys. i have regained semi-control, enough to last till i get to school. i have a few more-savy-then-me friends down there who ill get to standby on the wipe. also dont want my dad to know ive already screwed up another computer, hehe
Dont worry about it.

If you are still a little bit hesistant to do it, atleast be with your more-savy-then-you friends while they do the wiping for you and look at how they do it. You'll soon find that it is not that hard after all
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post #11 of 20
9/10/04 at 9:59am
all you'll need is directx and your video drivers.

everything else is on the additional cd's.

piece of CAKE.
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post #12 of 20
9/10/04 at 10:33am
Yeah, an XP rebuild is super easy. Throw the CD in and reboot and just follow right through the steps on the screen. I rebuild my machines usually every few months, just to keep them clean. I actually rebuilt a few weeks ago, but I'm rebuilding again tomorrow because I'm going to create an image of the machine with XP SP2, Office 2k3 SP1, and all my other core apps installed for backup purposes.
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post #13 of 20
9/10/04 at 1:06pm
Thread Starter 
ok well im not nearly as hesitant now. A friend of mine also said its cake and would give me a hand if i needed it. The pop ups have literally destroyed this thing. I run adaware, spybot, norton av and sys mechanic probably every 20 minutes and they pick up 500 new things every time. Ive gone from the CPU load being 3-5% while browsing/chatting to being 88%. I came back from showering and in that short time 47 windows had opened? I cant take it, i must wipe and restart
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post #14 of 20
9/10/04 at 1:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by norcalz71
ok well im not nearly as hesitant now. A friend of mine also said its cake and would give me a hand if i needed it. The pop ups have literally destroyed this thing. I run adaware, spybot, norton av and sys mechanic probably every 20 minutes and they pick up 500 new things every time. Ive gone from the CPU load being 3-5% while browsing/chatting to being 88%. I came back from showering and in that short time 47 windows had opened? I cant take it, i must wipe and restart
What browser are you using? I recently switched to Mozilla Firefox coz my IE started getting all these popups/viruses/stupid stuff and I cant uninstall them. I tried deleting all the nasty stuff and once I reboot, they are back again and eating up resources. After using Firefox, the problem was gone. The usual nasties that loads up everytime I run IE are also gone.
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post #15 of 20
9/10/04 at 1:20pm
dude, you got a dell!

no, wait, what was that for?

dude, you need firefox!

yeah that's better hehe

seriously get Firefox and Thunderbird from Mozilla.org. Firefox blocks all popups, and doesn't have the security issues with all the url script issues that make your browser do something you didn't want etc. I think it's had 3 major security issues, and MSIE has had what? at least 2 or 3 a month average?

And Thunderbird doesn't get affected by all the worms running of late, because those are all Visualbasic scripts which Outlook is built on, and Thunderbird doesn't do VB script, so it can't auto execute all those worms

and tab browsing is the bomb dude! oh and you gotta track down the session saver extension, it saves all the tabs you had open when you close, so the next time you open, all the same tabs/pages come back up. it's great for keeping an eye on this forum I have a tab here all day long
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post #16 of 20
9/10/04 at 2:36pm
stewie rulez username as we all know
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post #17 of 20
9/10/04 at 6:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by rogueone
dude, you got a dell!

no, wait, what was that for?

dude, you need firefox!

yeah that's better hehe
Better indeed!


Quote:
Originally Posted by rogueone
and tab browsing is the bomb dude! oh and you gotta track down the session saver extension, it saves all the tabs you had open when you close, so the next time you open, all the same tabs/pages come back up. it's great for keeping an eye on this forum I have a tab here all day long
I second emotion! Tab browsing is the !@#$@%!
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post #18 of 20
9/11/04 at 1:56pm
Thread Starter 
well i did the wipe and here i am again, everything seems to be running good. Didnt take to long, was pretty easy and im back to square one. Ive pretty much just got the OS, Norton AV, and Mozilla Firefox on here. Is there anything i should do to be able to revert back to this nice clean stage? Thanks for the help guys
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post #19 of 20
9/11/04 at 7:28pm
You should also get a firewall and AdAware

I'm going to format my 9100 soon as I'm getting winXP pro and I was just wondering if all I need to install from Dell is on the cd named "Drivers And Utilities - Contents: Device Drivers & Diagnostics and Utilites".
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post #20 of 20
9/11/04 at 7:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cloud84
You should also get a firewall and AdAware
And Spybot.
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