Please do anything of the following if you really know what you’re doing. There are ways where you do not need to perform any of the below steps. This is one of the many ways of doing the same.
- Take backup of
- Addressees and Email data from Email Clients (E.g. Outlook Express, Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook)
- Documents & Settings > Profile (Favorite, History, User specific documents (My Documents) etc.)
- Music Playlists
- Each of your browser profiles and plug-in stored data
- Local Bookmarks
- Drivers of each software or device you’re using
- Dial-up and Networking settings.
- Locally stored data of IMs (e.g. Skype, MSN, Yahoo)
- Folders placed on Desktop!
- All other important settings, files and folders of the drive you’re formatting
- Make a note of
- All the installed software
- Path of the installed software
- License information, CD-keys and serial numbers of each of the software
- Username and passwords which you have stored in your browser or local machine
- All the browser plug-ins that you use
- Anything that is important but missed in the above list!
- Format the PC
- Install The operating system
- Verify that drivers and other required components of operating system are updated
- Install the antivirus software
- Install all other required software
- Restore the data which you backed up earlier.
- Verify that everything is working as it should after the restoration of the data.
- Archive the backup in a DVD or something alike.