How do I reformat my drive, since system restore won’t work? I have Windows XP and use the latest IE?

System restore won’t work from any point. I also am getting a popup, like Adware when I open a new window, have run various checks and can’t find the file causing this. The popup is relative new, the system restore problem is several months old. Will I lose my iTunes if I have to format my drive again? It’s the only thing I’m worried about.

I’m not sure what the problem exactly is, and it would be hard to tell without working on your system for a bit.

First, no matter what, it would be prudent to backup your iTunes songs. If you have a CD-R you can burn them to a disk as data (don’t burn them as songs, as you’ll only be able to fit maybe a dozen per CD) using the software that came with your computer. Or perhaps easier would be to buy a USB hard drive (http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Brand.asp?Brand=1724), or if 2 GB isn’t enough then there are larger sizes available. And those things are pretty handy no matter what.

If you want to reformat everything, then you can reinstall XP with the Windows CD or perhaps with the computer manufacturer’s CD that came with your computer. During the install there is an option to reformat the drive.

But if you want to avoid formatting you can run something like Spybots Search and Destroy (or some other anti-virus / anti-adware) to see if it can clean up all of the problem files on your computer.

Disable IE to get rid of Adware

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