Endless Paradigm

I'm a computer programmer, I know a multitude of languages and have coded some pretty complex
poo poo, but I'll be the first to admit that I don't know spoon about computers. For a long time now
my laptop has been accumulating garbage and junk and poo poo and I didn't care, well now about 50 Gigs
has gone missing, and everything's all cluttered, so I've decided to re-format and start anew. But, not
knowing anything about computers aside from hardware and programming, I dunno what this entails, and
would appreciate any help.

First off, re-formatting itself. What will I lose? Naturally all files, word doc's, movies, etc. I'll be transferring those
to an external hd. But will I also lose my programs, e.g. Acrobat reader, firefox, apps like that, etc?

Next I want to make my laptop as efficient as possible, meaning when I reinstall Office and Firefox and Adobe,
I don't want all the extra spoon tearing up my processor time, I want everything lightweight and fast. I'd also like
any suggestions on security applications, e.g. McAffee, AVG, etc. I currently have McAffee, but, gawd, that's
soo freakin slow, It makes my lappy crawl. I'm not afraid to pay for protection, but I want something powerful
and fast.

I think that's it, any suggestions would be appreciated, I know Zinga gave a list over at 'hacks and I'll follow it
as I see fit, but I'd liek some other help too. Thanks.

-V

you lose EVERYTHING! even the OS ,. . . well I do whenever I reformat. just backup the important stuff.

Hm. The OS too? Maybe now'd be a good time to switch to vista. ;P

lol get a cracked verion of xp professional even updates work

^^I have a legit copy. But I have a legit Vista too. :@

yeah pick one . . a slower nicer looking vista . .  or a faster poo poo looking XP . . . you decide its your computer.

Hm. XP it is then. :P

good choice :D

If you reformat, the only thing that stays in tact are the partition table and other partitions.  If you're harddrive doesn't have more than one partition, you have nothing to worry about.

After you reformat, you just boot up from the XP/Vista CD.  If you want lightweight however, I _strongly_ suggest nLite.  Install nLite onto your current Windows installation.  nLite, after started, will ask you for your Windows XP CD - give that and it'll do whatever it needs to.
After that, remove all the unnecessary components from the list, like Internet Explorer (since you're using Firefox; note that you should keep the Internet Explorer Core rendering engine) and Windows Media Player, MSN Explorer etc etc.

It'll compile an ISO for you which you just burn, then use that to install Windows.  If you have a x64 CPU, I suggest XP x64, it's much faster and more stable (based off Windows Server 2003).

If you must go Vista, use vLite to cut out the poo poo.

:D Sick. Been waiting for ur post. I'll do that. Do u suggest any anti-virus/firewall
above any other?