Best way to start fresh with my PC?

I'm called Owen and I'm glad you're looking at this right now. Ahah.

Let's start at the basics. My computer is slow. Real slow. And it's at the point where I want to just.ha, I just want to break it. But no! I will continue - it has been my partner in crime for several years now.

It is not just slow. Nothing seems to work. MSN, "service unavailable" - the pesky thing has been unavailable for the past five months! Every. Single. Internet. Page. "This web page's security certificate is invalid or does not comply." etc.

I'm fed up!

And I want to start again.

However, with limited PC "techie" information, I don't know what to do. I've heard of formatting the PC… However, I'm very, heh, let's say… Protective. I do not want to blow up my PC and whatnot. I need a way to get everything deleted and things to go back to whenever I got the PC. I think you call it "factory" settings.

I have no reboot CD and the model is an IBM ThinkVision. Not sure on the exact model - let's just say it's old. But it needs saving and it needs to be faster. I created a LOT of things on there and now it's wrecked. My creation.spoilt. Anyways, back to reality. I really need basic, n00b-friendly advice.

I appreciate I have basically led my computer into becoming a wreck that it stands like today (Lol) but you can't blame me for asking - it's what this useful site is for.

Hope I've supplied you enough information.

Please no trashy answers saying "reboot it" or whatever. I need clear and useful answers - at least they'll get the best answer honour.

Guest

Well, you forgot to provide us with one very important piece of information: the operation system of your computer. Or, maybe I just passed it up. Anyways…

With the limited information you provided me with, I have a little advice. First: Stop using Internet Explorer as your web browser. Download Firefox or Google Chrome; they are much more efficient in terms of speed and security at surfing the web.

Second: Make a new user account on this computer, and give it the highest privileges it can have, e.g. Administrator on Windows. Then, from that account, delete your previous account, and do not keep any files leftover. This leaves all the old personal files (that you said you did not wish to keep) and all old settings deleted forever.

Third: Open your control panel (In Windows [I'm going to have to assume you are running Windows] click start > control panel) open "Add/Remove Programs." From here, uninstall any program that you are sure you don't want.

Fourth: In Windows, click start > run then type into the text field, "msconfig" and open the Startup tab. Uncheck the checkbox besides any program you are sure you don't want running everytime you start up your computer. Click ok.

Fifth, (last but not least) defragment your hard drive. If you are unsure how to do this on your operating system, then Google is your friend.

Tahdah! If you are running Windows, then you should have a significantly faster computer. Hope I helped.

eKade BETA