- 1). Power on your computer and insert the recovery CD into the CD-ROM drive. Restart your computer by clicking the "Start" menu followed by "Restart."
- 2). Wait for a prompt to appear that says "Press any key to boot from CD." When this appears on your screen, press any key on your keyboard. The computer now boots from your CD and not your hard drive. This allows you to make changes, including reformat, your hard drive.
- 3). Select a language to install the the fresh version of the operating system. Click "Next" in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.
- 4). Click the "Install Now" button in the middle of the screen. A licensing agreement page loads. Agree to the licensing terms and click "Next" to proceed. After you have agreed to the licensing terms, a list of installation options appears.
- 5). Choose the "Custom" installation method. This method allows you to reformat the drive before reinstalling the operating system.
- 6). Delete all hard drive partitions before proceeding with the reformatting process. A partition is a section of your hard drive that you've dedicated for a specific purpose. Select the partition from the main viewing window and click the "Delete" button to remove the partition. You may not have any partitions on your drive. If this is the case, skip this step.
- 7). Select your hard drive. After removing partitions, you should only have one drive remaining in the main viewing window. Click on that drive.
- 8). Click the "Format" link beneath the main viewing window. This walks you through the formatting processes and removes all data from the drive. You hard drive is completely reformatted at this point.
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