Mental Meanderings

Reformating Hard Drive leads to clean computer

Sometimes I get crazy ideas into my head. Today because I couldn't get Zoo Tycoon to play properly I loaded up a different game. That game wasn't working either. Something was definately not right with my computer so I thought about what I could do. Eventually I decided to reformat my harddrive.

Anyone who has done this themselves would know the task is not a simple one. First you have to back up any information you have on your harddrive that you don't want to loose. In my case a great deal of the junk I had collecting in My Documents including, photo's, music, programming projects, genealogy, and writing. Then you put your windows CD in the drive and restart the computer pressing any key to make it boot from CD. Delete the partition (you've now got an empty harddrive with absolutely nothing on it) repartition. With a new fresh partition you can now reinstall Windows.

Windows takes about an hour to fully install. Then you've got to install any programs you'd normally use, in my case, Yahoo, Microsoft Office, NVidia, Radeon, HTML Kit, Adobe Reader and my modem. All these things are kept on handy disks including a file called My Downloads. It's time consuming but thankfully I reformat my drive often enough to have it down to an artform.

Of course what I forgot to backup was my favorites. So I had to remember websites I'd normally have in there. All the web pages I'd had dumped in there for reading, reviewing and studying are gone. So are all the contests I was going to enter. But it's kind of freeing to have such a tidy Favorites.

In fact it feels pretty good to have so little on my HD at the moment. I've got so much space, it's unnatural My writing folder is bare at the moment except for my novel and a txt file for my poetry.com Haiku. Everything is backed up on disk and it can all stay there for now. Out with the old and onto the new.

Starting fresh with plenty of room to fill. I've even got some great inspirational messages and beautiful pictures set up as my desktop background. My PC is looking great. My computer desk is tidy. It's wonderful having such a clean, neat workspace. Now if only I can keep it that way. Not likely but I'll try.

G'night, now's time for Stargate: Atlantis and then to bed ready for a good sleep and waking up to 20 minutes with my novel on Friday.