need to delete previous "ghost" versions of XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Samuel Jones
  • Start date Start date
S

Samuel Jones

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
 
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.
Click to expand...

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
 
see if the maker of your hard drive has a low level format utility. This
will overwrite the whole drive with 0's. cheers.
 
Back
Top