Installing WinXP on a laptop

[Ulverbeast]

Hi! i'm sitting here with my cousin's laptop which i promised her i would fix. the problem is that it's so full of virus that i don't really see any other way than formatting it.

Now when i format my stationary i always boot from my Windows CD and format the C:\ drive and install Windows on it.

My question is: how do i format a laptop properly? it has two drives, a drive called ACER and one called ACERDATA.
ACER is the one with Windows on.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif!!

You should let the experts here see if they think fixing it (getting rid of the infections, spyware virus etc) may be the better way to go. But meanwhile they will at least need more information to go on. For starters, the make and model of the laptop and if you or she has the recovery disks for it.

The partition labeled Acerdata sounds to be the recovery partition but you still may need a recovery disk to proceed if it is decided to wipe and reinstall.

Also whatever attempts to rid the notebook of infections should be listed along with the specs so the security peeps here will get a better picture as to what has been done and what to do next.

[Paul Komski]

I think the AcerData partition is simply an additional "data" partition (it was just a few years ago) that can be used to store any data of your choosing - so that if you need to reinstall the operating system the data put onto it doesn't get overwritten by the reinstall.

It could contain recovery software of course and if you post your model number it should be relatively easy to check things out.

Can you look and see what it contains maybe? And do you have recovery disks for the laptop?