Reinstall Windows on a PC

[sionharris]

My girlfriend is selling her computer tomorrow so I need to delete everything that is on it and reinstall Windows. I've used Google and read through the Windows instruction booklet but cannot find anything that explains how to remove Windows from your machine. I have also never installed Windows before so would appreciate an idiot's guide on how to do this.

Many thanks.

 

[sionharris]

I should add that I found these instructions but I'm not sure how easy the 'onscreen instructions' will be. It also seems like there should be a much simpler way to delete Windows.

1. Start the computer in Safe Mode with Command Prompt support (press F8 during start up).

2. Navigate to %systemroot%\system32.

3. Type osuninst.exe and press Enter.

4. Follow the onscreen instructions.

 

[Deinonychus]

You could always just insert the Windows CD into the computer and boot up into it, assuming the BIOS supports booting to a CD.

There, you should be able to delete the installation from the hard drive and reinstall Windows.

 

[SMM]

You could always just insert the Windows CD into the computer and boot up into it, assuming the BIOS supports booting to a CD.

There, you should be able to delete the installation from the hard drive and reinstall Windows.

Hopefully you have the original disk, or a version which supports this type of operation.

 

[sionharris]

Yep, I booted from the CD, deleted the old partition and am currently installing Windows again on a new partition. Surprisingly easy, really.

Oddly, when I tried doing this by loading the installation CD in Windows, it said something along the lines of, "You cannot perform this operation because you have a more recent version of Windows installed" - presumably because we had SP2.

Anyway, we are now rid of Windows. Which is nice.

Thanks for the help.