Harddrive Help.

How can I completely wipe my 2 HDD's without reinstalling windows or formatting my PC?

Is there a way? Because I deleted some important System files that I cant seem to get back, and I have virus' and shizzle so I just wanna start a fresh.

Any help?

Whatever I need to do, can someone give me a step by step plz.

You should be able to go to:

My computer>C: (or whatever drive)
Right click then; format.

Never done it that way before but I'm pretty sure that justs sets everything back to default.
I usually use this backup disc that came with my computer though.

Can anyone else verify this?

formatting erases the complete hard drive, which is being formatted (e.g. c:, d.

If your Windows still starts up, you should be able to fix it without formatting, or reinstalling windows.

I would do the following:

Check if the PC has an antivirus program (norton, mcafee, etc.), and if it updates itself. It should have a small icon next to the windows clock, right click, about, it should tell you what's the date of the virus definition file.

If the antivirus program is ok, run it, all files, and it should kill the viruses.

Next is checking for spywares. I use SpyBot seach and destroy for that.

Then your PC must be clean from malware

If you miss Operating System files, I would reinstall the last Service Pack. For Windows 2000, it is SP4, for XP it is SP2.

Thing is, I'm running off a copy of windows, and my virus scans are copied aswell. So that may hinder things because neither of them can update themselves...

Then you should replace your non-updating antivirus program with one of the alternatives detailed next.

You can get free antivirus for personal use from two companies I know:

http://www.avira.com/ go to downloads and select Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic.

http://www.avast.com/ go to downloads and select avast! 4 Home Edition. You will need a free registration, to get a free license key valid for 1 year. If that 1 year passes you can get a new free license key again.

You only need to install one of them. They are both professional antivirus programs, they live from their commercial versions. After installation it may need updating to get the latest virus definitions, and have it run
on your drives to clean up the viruses.

You can get SpyBot here (free for personal use):

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html go to downloads, get spybot 1.4, and detection updates (the newest available).

again, install both the software and the detection updates, and run it.

As for the windows update problem I have no real solution. If you already have XP Service Pack 2 installed, you can have security updates even if your copy is not legal. You can check the Service Pack version with right clicking My Computer, and select properties. If it isn't Service Pack 2, it won't let you update Windows as long as you don't update to Service Pack 2. But Service Pack 2 checks if your copy is legal, and won't install if it is not.

Why didn't you just ask me Tom? I'll speak to you about it tonight when I get home from work.

I deleted files from the System32 folder. Programs like iTunes wont open anymore because I deleted some commands. I can't reinstall them anymore either because I buggered it up. But that is all I did to it.

If I wipe my hard drives (x2 of them) and reinstall windows, will the problem be fixed?