Help with formating

[LTC332]

First off, i know nothing about computers, and just found this sight trying to find a helpful website to look at. I think this is a pretty basic question. My computer just lost all its memory. I can barely run anything. I tried to defrag it, and it showed that all files were fragmented and there wasn't enough memory to do the defrag. I figured i could just formate the computer and just start all over. I tried that through msdos and i couldn't figure it out. Can someone help me out? Thanks alot.

 

[wolluf]

Can you explain a bit more please? Like what operating system you are runnning? Some info about the machine (speed of processor, amount of RAM, hardware its got - eg graphics, sound, modem, network cards etc, CD/DVD ROMs/writers. Also, what does 'My computer just lost all its memory' mean?

Also, anything that happened prior to the problem that might give a clue (software/hardware installed/removed, virus, major crash)? Have you an up to date virus scanner installed?

If there's noting wrong with machine, you should be able to reinstall the operating system - we can advise better when we know what that is.

Is there data on the drive you would rather not lose that's not backed up elsewhere?

 

[LTC332]

I dont have anything on the computer that i care about. I can loose it all. Its the cheapest Dell you can get off their website. It runs XP. 2.14 ghz processor. 128 mb ram. I didn't put a graphics or sound card in, so whatever came with it is what it has. (cant expect much from a 400 dollar computer) I have Verizon DSL. I have a CD reader/writer. The one thing i dont have is a floppy drive. It didn't come with one. (not sure why it came with a cd burner and not a floppy drive...)

My problem is there is no memory left. There is always an error coming up that says windows virtual memory is minimal to low. I just tried to send a movie i edited on my computer back to my camera and it said there wasn't enough room on the C: drive. I have 1.97 GB of free memory out of 37.24 GB.

There hasn't been anything major happen to the computer that would have brought this problem, atleast not that i know of. i have the Mcafee virus scan that always runs that came with the computer.

Thanks alot.

 

[paparazi]

You need:
More physical memory! Windows XP uses around 110mb just to run so you can see any machine with just 128mb is going to run out very easily.
you just need to go out and buy another stick of memory! another 256mb should speed things up quite considerably.
take the tower down to your local PC repair shop and let them install the correct type for you or go online to:

http://www.crucial.com

These people gaurantee 100% compatibility as long as you can ive them all the details .

If you can afford it I would also recommend you buying a second hard drive, set to master and reset your old one to slave (jumper on the back of the units) to give yourself much more storage.
You can pick up an 80gb for as little as £45 ($65?)
Re-installing windows then, is just a case of setting the first boot device in the bios to cdrom, placing your copy of XP in the drive, where it should spin up and start the install process, quick format NTFS and follow through to install.
Martin
It looks like you need it!

Start by questioning and soon you will be anwering.
So please take but remember to return and give when you can.

 

[Lemon13]

what you need is to clean up your harddrive. go to start/programms/accessories/systemtools?/disk cleanup? (i dont know the correct english titles for ?, have a look around, you will find it) and clean up c:\ (this will take a while). when finished do a defragmentation!

another 128mb ram (up to 512mb) will defenetly speed up your system, especially when you do movie editing.