I want to clean my hard drive and reinstall windows and hardware. How Thanks Fred ? :-/

The first step is to make sure you have installation disks for all your software including Windows and drivers disks for all your hardware. The next step is to make sure you have the Windows Startup floppy or a bootable floppy that will read your CD drive. You can make the floppy under Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs. You also need FDISK and FORMAT on that floppy.

Once you are prepared you boot from the floppy and run FDISK and run SETUP from the CD. You may need to Format the drive first. In which case you run FORMAT C: /S from the floppy.

Can I switch the hard drive from my old computer to my sons as it is getting old and can I leave the os and some of the programs on as well it saves formatting and stating all over again any ideas

I have installed xp pro but the cd I got of my friend is a german version the same os system but all in german is it poss to change to english version as I have to look in the german dictionary every time to translate as it is I know most of the boxes from old