How to reinstall your OS the right way

One of the most frequent "repairs" I perform is virus/malware removal.  Never let anyone tell you that they can remove malware without re-installing the operating system.   The only way you can be 100% sure that you removed malware is to backup, format the hard drive and re-install your operating system from a known good source.  To that end, it can be a pain in the butt, you can take the easy way out and let me do it or you can do it yourself.  For the daring, here are some of the things you need to do it properly...

You can do a clean start using just your old drive and a pile of DVDs for backup, but I recommend that you use this method and buy two new hard drives. You’ll use one as your new C: drive and the second to store your backups and images. (Consider the original drive as a backup of all your data up to this point.) Here’s our reasoning: First, an OS reinstall is the perfect time to make the jump to a new drive. Second, the performance benefits of your clean install will only be enhanced by using a newer, larger drive. The new 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda, for example, has an average read speed of 104MB/s. Your old 500GB drive probably tops out in the 50MB/s to 60MB/s range, depending on the generation of the drive.

You’ll also see significant performance benefits if you have a lot of data because a drive’s performance weakens as it approaches full capacity—so that 400GB of data on a 1.5TB drive or even a 1TB drive won’t impinge performance as it would on a 500GB drive. Finally, storage has become one of the most inexpensive components in a PC. So take our advice and spend the $200 on two new 1TB drives and save yourself some heartache.

If you choose to ignore this advice and reinstall the OS on your original drive, you must back up all your data to discs before proceeding. 

Check out the complete article from Maximum PC on the left under What's New