Want to re-format PC - Need help/how to

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PC has recently been playing me up, and ever since I first built it at the start of the year one of my graphics cards was playing up and had to get replaced and havent been able to play BF3 due to it freezing and now after being told to update my drivers by EA its very jumpy when I try to play.

Want to start afresh but I am not 100% confident about the method, can I simply stick the windows disk in the drive and do a fresh reinstall? I'm running both a SSD and HDD but I hear you cant reformat SSD's?

Any help is appreciated :)


EDIT- Meant to post in software forum!
 
sure you can reformat ssd
yeh you could just try a re-install first, it will move all your old stuff to windows.old
if its windows7 anyway
 
yeh if you on wireless make sure u got the drivers for that but its pretty fast to do
maybe 30mins u back up and running again
 
Backup what you need from the SSD to the HDD.

Power off the pc and disconnect the HDDs sata cable, leave the SSD connected. Power on and head into the BIOS. Check that ACHI mode is enabled under the sata options and set the rig to boot from the optical drive.

Put the windows 7 disk in the optical drive and hit F10 (save and exit). The rig will boot the install disk, you can format the SSD here and reinstall the OS. Once you have the OS installed you can reconnect the storage HDD.

Any problems you know where to find us :)
 
Just thought of something, I have a Office 2010 which has two licenses. Both myself and my sister use one licence each.

Will I have to purchase office 2010 again or will the licence key still work?
 
BTW. I'd make sure you have your WIFI (or ethernet, is using hard wired connection) drivers saved on a memory stick or on your HDD before you start you new install (as previously stated). Not only that, I always have a download of Avast (or any choice of Antivirus software) at the ready also.

Once you have Win 7 installed, install your AV software and then Wi-Fi/Ethernet drivers. Next thing to do is the updates. I prefer to get them all done and out of the way before doing much else with the machine. Next thing I do is create a backup image of your SSD onto DVDs or a hard drive. I use Easeus Todo Backup Free. This can be very useful should something go badly wrong with your installation, either when installing drivers, or if your SSD fails or you are unfortunate enough to get a bad virus infection. You'll have your own restoration disc/image which will get you back to a clean install much more quickly than using the Win 7 disc and ploughing through all of those updates yet again. You could do the driver installs before you create the full backup, but in the unlikely event that a driver badly messes things up, you'll wish you had already done the backup.
 
Just thought of something, I have a Office 2010 which has two licenses. Both myself and my sister use one licence each.

Will I have to purchase office 2010 again or will the licence key still work?

Two? I thought it came as 1 or 3 user licenses?

Anyway that's immaterial. I've reinstalled all 3 of my licenses of Office 2010 and it has reactivated with no issues whatsoever.
 
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