My computer is acting weird, and very slow. My CD drive won't stay closed. I
was wondering about reinstalling Windows, but I can't figure out how. Any
help?
If your CD drive won't stay closed, that'll definitely complicate
matters. In a nutshell: put your OS disc in the CD drive. Reboot the
machine. Ideally your computer will auto detect the bootable disc in
the drive. If it does it'll prompt you with a "Press any key to
continue" message. If you press the key, it'll boot from the OS
disc. From there you can go about reinstalling windows. If you don't
receive that message, you might have to jump into BIOS to have it boot
from CD or -- depending on the manufacturer of your machine -- you may
have to hit a special function key to get it to boot from CD (eg F12
on Dell machines, etc).
The OS install is fairly straight forward. If you're doing a fresh
install simply smoke the former partition, reformat the drive, and
away you go.
