need to delete previous "ghost" versions of XP

Without completely reformatting my hard drive and doing a
clean install, is there anyway to deleted program files
and such from previous installations? It seems when you
boot from CD and do a new install of XP, it just "hides"
the previous documents of your previous XP. Yet viruses
and spyware can hide in these and corrupt the fresh
install. Thanks in advance for any input.

SJ

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:05:49 -0700, "Samuel Jones"
<anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>Without completely reformatting my hard drive and doing a
>clean install, is there anyway to deleted program files
>and such from previous installations? It seems when you
>boot from CD and do a new install of XP, it just "hides"
>the previous documents of your previous XP. Yet viruses
>and spyware can hide in these and corrupt the fresh
>install. Thanks in advance for any input.

Samuel,

it isn't really so bad. When you do a clean install, obviously
all system files are overwritten. Any files that might be there
but don't belong to Windows are never used. So there is very
little to worry about.

What you can and should do from time to time anyway is to scan
your entire disk for viruses and for adware.

Hans-Georg

--
No mail, please.

see if the maker of your hard drive has a low level format utility. This
will overwrite the whole drive with 0's. cheers.
"Hans-Georg Michna" <hans-georgNoEmailPlease@michna.com> wrote in message
news:g0hbk0p5sr9khph2hm4njcrjvovebiqdc0@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:05:49 -0700, "Samuel Jones"
> <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
>
>>Without completely reformatting my hard drive and doing a
>>clean install, is there anyway to deleted program files
>>and such from previous installations? It seems when you
>>boot from CD and do a new install of XP, it just "hides"
>>the previous documents of your previous XP. Yet viruses
>>and spyware can hide in these and corrupt the fresh
>>install. Thanks in advance for any input.
>
> Samuel,
>
> it isn't really so bad. When you do a clean install, obviously
> all system files are overwritten. Any files that might be there
> but don't belong to Windows are never used. So there is very
> little to worry about.
>
> What you can and should do from time to time anyway is to scan
> your entire disk for viruses and for adware.
>
> Hans-Georg
>
> --
> No mail, please.