Dear
Friend,
I am in San Francisco for part of this month on vacation and for my husband's graduation from the Navy Post Graduate School in Monterey. I'll try to share some great pictures with you next month on Facebook of my trip.
If you are not connected with me yet, click any of the links below to visit with me online on a variety of platforms.
Best Regards,
Nancy McCord
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Doing a Clean Install on Your Laptop to Speed Things Up
I have to say if I can do it, you can do it too. Typically my
husband does all my IT and
hardware stuff for the nine
computers on my business network,
but for some reason when my
laptop started loading at an
excruciatingly slow speed,
I decided that I should try
to format the disk and do a
fresh install myself. I am
still asking myself why at
this point, but, I did think
it would be a good article
and "how-to" paper
from a non-geeky point of view.
So, as a hardware non-savvy
type, I wanted to share my
experience in this article.
What I want you to come away with from this piece is that yes, you can do it too! It is not hard to format your disk and do a "clean install" of your operating system on either your laptop or your desktop. There is nothing to be afraid of, just be patient and take it slow.
First, in this article I will give you the "Cliff Notes" version or quick version. I clocked my original startup and load time on my older model Dell Latitude D610 laptop, it took 56 seconds to get to the Windows login screen and then 3 minutes and 34 seconds to fully load the operating system from startup all together. Additionally anytime I was online it took forever to load a page and start up new software. To get Word going from the operational desk top it took 23 seconds. To me, startup and load time seemed excruciatingly slow.
When your computer or laptop gets very slow, like mine had, it is just time to format the disk, totally clean out the registry, remove program bloat, and get back to the "lean and mean" system you had before.
Here's what I did and the time it took to format my laptop disk and do a fresh operating program install:
- 40 minutes preparation. - Prepare to start. I accumulated my
laptop disks and the disks
of the applications I would
reload. I had to deactivate
all Adobe software so I would be able
to use the software licenses
again, even though I was
using the same computer.
All versions of Adobe products
like Dreamweaver, Acrobat,
and Photoshop from CS3 and
higher have this
"deactivate" or move the
license option on the Help
menu. Additionally I copied
all my files to another computer
over my network. Although
it took all night to copy
the files, I only included
the set up of the transfer
in my 40 minute time listed
above. I would recommend
that you perform these actions
the day ahead and let the
file copy action process
overnight with the real work
of formatting your disk starting
in the morning.
- 1 hour format and reload. - Yes, it
is surprising that this is
all it took to format my
disk and reload my operating
system. The process is actually
very easy. I inserted the
program disk from my laptop
into the CD drive and for
me, I had to boot from the
CD as my version of XP on
my disk was older than the
version of XP on my laptop.
(This happens if you keep
your system current with
updates.)
I had to click F12 at the early startup screen to boot from the CD which then started a different routine. Once I clicked F12 to boot from CD I had to push the space bar quickly. I had to do this twice to get to the proper screen to format my disk. If Windows starts up as usual and does not ask if you want to repair the installation or format the disk then you know you did not click the spacebar quick enough and need to try again by restarting your computer. When I say quickly - man, I mean quickly! I actually had to restart my computer four times to get this part right to get to the proper screen.
Once in the proper menu, Windows does it all. I only had to select to format my disk and use NTSF file system. After the operating system was loaded I was asked to select my language, time zone, and computer name (for my network). Oh, and I had to set an administrative password. Actually this part after the F12 and spacebar debacle was pretty easy.
- 3 hours for finishing up.
- Install your laptop software.
Most desktops will skip right
to settings and applications,
but laptops need to install
the battery monitor, your
DVD software, your wireless
connection sensor and other
cool laptop specific things.
You should start with your
first laptop disk. Mine was
called operating system.
I had three other disks
also to load. One was for
the drivers, one was for
the CD operation, and one
was for sound. Now most laptops
will ask in sequence for
these disks and walk you
through the installation
as well as auto sense your
network and Internet Connection.
My older Dell laptop did
not. This is actually where
I begged my husband to help
me. "Yikes, I am lost!"
For me, the driver disk needed
to have each driver clicked
and then extracted one by
one. The proper items had
a check mark next to them
on the screen, but the drivers
did not auto load. My IT
guru husband said this was
most unusual, but you may
run into this too.
- Then, I was able to connect to my network, with minimal effort using the XP wizard, go on the Internet and download any missing updates from Microsoft, reload my virus software and work on loading my applications back on my laptop. I spent another two to three hours installing my applications. I was selective of what I reinstalled to prevent bloat on my older model laptop.
What I learned from this is that formatting your disk and reloading your operating system is really not that hard. I feel if I can do it, you can too! Out of the several hours needed, I really only needed about 15 minutes of really "pro" help, and if you do not run into laptop "issues" like I did, you would most likely be okay.
If you are a hardware "newbie" like I am you may want to do your work on the weekend and have a tech savvy friend "on call" just to help out if needed. As for me, my performance has significantly improved. Now that I have reloaded my software the time to get to my login screen from start up has gone from 56 seconds to 36 seconds. The time from startup to fully loaded has gone from 3 minutes 34 seconds to under two minutes. Additionally surfing the web and the speed to load and use applications has significantly improved as well.
In closing, I do want to say that I always thought that with a laptop you never did a fresh install. When you had a problem you just bought a new one, but I am here to say that you can clean up a laptop and have everything be fully functional and actually better than before. So save yourself some money and take some time to format your disk and reload your laptop operating system.
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