I blew it...

Hello everyone, nice to meet all of you.

I am going to have to format my drive soon. I bought it new from Emachines about 3 years ago. It is a P4 1.6 g, 384 ram. I recently discovered a hijacker (or 6). Unfortunately I know less than I think I know. I believe I have eliminated them, however windows xp (sp2) does not work properly.

I have the original system restore disks (2 cds) that came with it. Can I reinstall windows with those?

Thanks for the help...

Ah hello! And welcome to the forum! Always nice to see new faces here! :mrgreen: eMachines is by far one of the worst machines you can buy! You probably know this now, eMachines is built from other parts that other manufacturers do not want. Yes, you can restore your system using those disks. However, we have some very talented people on the forum! Would you like us to attempt to fix your machine without having to resort to formatting?

Welcome to the forum Psychotuni
If you don't have a lot of programs and files on your computer, you may be better reformatting. Just pop the restore disk in and reboot your computer.......However......
If you have a lot of files/folders and programs, you may be better trying to repair the installation you have running now.
What makes you think sp2 is the problem? Are you receiving any error messages etc...

PS. I have an Emachines system and i've not had any problems at all in 2 1/2 years

I think 3 years is a long time to go without reformatting. It's always nice to reformat and have a squeaky clean machine.

Tyler, Emachine may have had a bad reputation when they first started out ( 7 years ago) but they make pretty nice systems now.

I still have no luck with them! :roll:

Well first off thanks for all of the input. I guess the best way to do this will be reply twice in one post.

Tyler: I would really like to format, Like Blizey said 2-3 years is 1-2 years too late. I know that there are problems hiding just waiting for me to fall asleep ex: I have no administrative tools. I probably did that...lol But if you really want to try...

Vidster: I have very few programs, but tons of files. I am going to borrow my buddys hdd to transfer my files to for a format. Also hopefully within the month I will be adding another drive (120gb) strictly for storage, and using the existing one (40gb) for the os, and programs. I am unfamilar with the repair option. Will that still leave anything I may have missed?
Oh one last thing... Years ago (back in the win 3.1 - 95 days) you could not boot from a cd. Do I need to make a bootable disk, or can I change the system bios to boot those cd's after I format?


Thanks again for all of the input, advice and help.

tuni

Your computer should be set to boot from your CD/Drive first. If not you can easily change it in your bios . You boot from the actual disk when reinstalling/repairing the XP operating system.
A repair install will reinstall your operating system over the top of the one you are using now, however....It should not move/delete any files,folders or programs you have installed. You would have to go back to the Microsoft site and reinstall any updates for you operating system though.

My advice at this point would be to perform a repair install of XP and wait until you have your new HD before performing the new install. If that doesn't solve your problems then go on to a fresh install. I left a link to performing a repair install below
http://cbttechs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=455

Just shout up if your not sure about anything :thumbs:

Thanks Vidster, that sounds like a plan. I may just do that repair now. If you dont hear back from me in a few days, send in the marines.

tuni