put in an operating system installation disk and reboot the computer, it will give you an option to reformat. keep in mind that regular operating systems do not contain the drivers for things like network adapter, sound cards/chip-set, graphics cards/chip-set. Operating systems contain basic drivers that will produce and image and sound but at a severally limited or basic level. It can be a real pain trying to figure out what hardware is on your motherboard if its an old laptop no longer supported by the manufacture. if possible, find out what exact hardware you have beforehand and download the installation files for each devices that requires drivers and save them to a cd or something. If its a decent computer company, you should be able to go to the manufactures website and enter in the model number of the laptop and they will have the correct drivers available. if you don't have an operating system installation disk, you can buy one (windows) or try a free one like Ubuntu (linux)

This post was edited by NatureNames on Sep 5 2013 02:51pm

and lots of malware.

@OP
look up The Magical Jelly Bean, its legit.

This post was edited by Glyph89 on Sep 6 2013 02:37am

www.ultimatebootcd.com

just call microsoft and BS them for a little while until tey send you a free cd, its what I did a couple times in the past. Just get your product key off the side of your pc (usually a sticker is there) or right click my computer and click properties to get your product key. I always use I just moved and lost my cd blah blah, withint 30 minutes of being transferred a few times they usually come through with a free cd/dvd in the mail.

This post was edited by Neebuak on Sep 11 2013 04:42pm