When Should I Format my Computer?

     If you are reading this article, probably you are looking for a shortcut to resolve some serious issue with your computer without having to reinstall the whole operating system. May be you think that it has been years since you installed the operating system and the performance of your PC has gone down which can be resolved only by starting from scratch. Or you see a lot of weird errors, suspect that something malicious in running in your PC and want to get rid of the problems by wiping the entire hard disk. But I know that you really don't love to do it and rather you are looking for a way to fix it by doing some simple steps. This article will help you on that.

What is the real problem?

The first thing we need to do is to simply look at the problem and put it into an appropriate category. The following are the four important categories that you may choose from.. Sometimes the following categories may overlap i.e your system performance may not be good because of a malware:

 1) System performance is not good

 2) You suspect that there is a virus or any other malware in your computer

 3) Something is not working as expected. For eg, you right click a folder and the context menu is empty, Your browser is not working but you are connected to the internet etc

 4) Your system does not boot or you are unable to login

 Before we discuss each topic individually, let us look at some general tips which are applicable for all of the above.

Some general tips:

1)  No matter what the problem is, you can't be alone in the world. There are a  lot of pages on the internet discussing problems and error messages. Note down the exact error if you get any, and search for it in Google. You will most likely find a solution in the first 10-20 results.

2) If there is a technical support number that you can call, then do it. A technical support executive will most likely be aware of any problem that is specific to the product you are calling about. You might have had a poor experience with technical support before, but remember that each time you call, you get a different person.

     Only very few people know that you can get free support at Microsoft for malware related issues and also for installation of Windows updates. You can call 1-800-PCSAFETY which is a Microsoft support number for virus related issues.

3)Post it in forums. There are forums which give solution for your problem for free, analyze Hijackthis logs and do even more. Remember to be honest about the problem and be polite. The issues are taken care by real experts in the appropriate fields.

System performance is not good

If the system performance is not good then it means that something in your system is messing with any of these four: CPU usage, memory, disk space or bandwidth

 CPU usage:

    Use the task manager (ctrl + alt + del), go to 'Processes' tab, and check for any process that is taking 5%-100%. Then troubleshoot accordingly. If your browser is consuming a lot of processor usage, then it is more likely caused by some browser ad ons. Get 'Process explorer' from Sysinternals using which you can get more information on each process.

Memory usage:

    In the Task manager, go to the 'Performance' tab and look under 'Physical memory'. The memory information is given in Kilobytes. Check how much is the available memory. If you have a lot of applications open or a lot of programs running in the start up, then the memory usage would be higher. Watch out for memory leaks. Some programs may seem to be using more memory than they actually need which means that there is some memory leak in that program

Disk space:

    All the programs in your system use temporary files and these files are supposed to be deleted by the program itself, if those files are no longer needed. But this doesn't happen all the time. You may be regularly cleaning up the 'temp' and '%temp%' directories, but there are a lot of other folders where temporary files are stored. Use an application like ccleaner to clean those files.

     If you want to know what is taking up your disk space, then read this article:  What is Eating up my Hard Drive Space?

Bandwidth usage:

   There are a lot of processes and services which connect to the internet and check for updates or  retrieve or upload data. If you don't need those programs to automatically download updates, then you can configure them the way you want.

  And a spyware or any other malware can create all the four problems mentioned above.

You suspect that there is a virus or any other malware in your computer

Below are the four main things to make sure that your computer is proteced:

   1) An antivirus software is always running in the background

   2) The antivirus software is up to date

   3) There is a firewall to prevent any malware from entering the system through open ports.

   4) You have all the Windows and application patches installed that address all the security vulnerabilities that are discovered

 Usually the problem can be resolved by correcting the issues in any of the above four above. But most of the malware processes may prevent you from doing so, if they are already running in the system. It is also possible that you have a new malware and your antivirus software doesn't have the definitions to detect it.

You can try the following in such cases:

1) There are free online scans that you can do in the websites of popular antivirus software like Symantec, Trend Micro etc. May be one of these scans will detect the malware in your system

2) Use Process explorer to find out if any suspicious process or handle is running. In most cases, a malware process will not have details like version info, company name etc and you may notice that these processes are highlighted in pink which means that the file is packed (Malware authors pack the malware executable with some packing software so that an antivirus application cannot recognize it)

3) Use TrendMicro Hijackthis to create a log of running processes, start up info, services etc and post it in online forums for solution. One such website where you can post those logs is  http://bleepingcomputer.com

Something is not working as expected

These kind of problems must be easier to resolve and most of the things listed in general tips should help you in resolving those problems. If you know when the problem started, you can always  use 'System restore' in Windows to restore your computer to a restore point that you specify.

 If the problem is related to a specific application, check for any option to reset the application settings to default. If you have the installation disk for the software, you can try uninstalling and reinstalling it.

 Also, try closing other processes to determine if another program running in the system is creating any conflict with it.

 Your system does not boot or you are unable to login

For this problem you need to first find out on which level this problem is occuring: Hardware level, Bios level and OS level.

 We are talking about OS level problems here, so lets ignore the other two.

You can try these steps if you can't start the Windows

1) Press f8 when booting and try starting the Windows from safemode, safemode with networking and safe mode with command prompt.  If  Windows can start in any of these three modes, then something running in the normal mode is causing the problem. It could be a service, a driver or a process. Try disabling start up programs and disconnect unnecessary hardware to isolate the problem

2) You can use a bootable CD like ERD commander, or Hiren boot cd, which allow you to boot to a Windows like interface. You can then try various tools available from the interface.

3)Try a repair installation of Windows. It is easier than formatting and starting from scratch.

Other articles that you may find useful:

How to Solve High Memory And High Cpu Issue in Firefox?

How to Resolve The High Cpu Usage Issue in Svchost.exe?

What is Eating up my Hard Drive Space?

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