Erasing hard drive

[LeeBee]

We recently bought a new computer and have put our old one in our childs room. The computer is dreadfully slow, how can we remedy it. It is an HP Pavillion, we had replaced the hard drive after a crash. It has WinMe on it along with tons of programs. We want to erase the hard drive and install only what we still use, if we uninstall WinMe will that erase the hard drive so we can start from scratch?

[Zachery]

you just need to bootup with your recover disk and preform that, id suggest backing up any files and just popin the restore disk ^^

[jingalala]

Once you reformat and start using the system, make sure you have a virus scan, adequate protection against spyware and adware, also keep up a good maintenance schedule with regular disk cleanups and defrag to keep the fast.

[cSc0911]

... We want to erase the hard drive and install only what we still use, if we uninstall WinMe will that erase the hard drive so we can start from scratch?

Also, note that uninstalling WinMe (or any OS from a hard drive), will not "erase" the data from the physical drive. This is where the others suggest using alternate programs that wipe it clean and ensure that no previous data exists...

--Chris