Now, that you have your programs up, you need to replenish them. In this case, I am using Firefox for today’s example. Most of this can be done on any other browser, but since I really don’t use the others and I love Firefox’s plugins, I am using it!

Getting your Bookmarks Back!

Hopefully before you reformatted, you backed up your computer. I know I did not mention this, but to me it is is second nature to back everything up. It is the reason I have multiple external hard drives with the exact same thing on it. I don’t take that many bookmarks, but when I do, I did it through Firefox. Looking back, I lost a lot of bookmarks because I backed up my computer wrong (for firefox).

If  you went to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > Backup (for firefox), you did it correctly! Congrats, you are smarter than me.

If you went to the bookmark folder under your profile and copied the folder, you are just as dumb as me. (if you use firefox as your main browser)

Either way, I will show you how to restore both.

If you  backed up your bookmarks correctly (for firefox), go to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > Restore and just restore the file.

Now, if you did it my method, I’ve learned this is bad for firefox and any third party browser (Opera, Firefox, Safari, Rockmelt, etc…).

For Firefox, just got to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > Import HTML and choose the Internet Explorer option instead. Basically, the same for all other browsers, except internet explorer which if you use that, you didn’t lose a single bookmark.

Getting Your Passwords Back

This method only works with Firefox as this is a Firefox plugin.

Like I said for the bookmarks, this is helpful if you backed everything up. If you are like me, you need to keep hundreds of passwords and to be quite honest, I don’t want to buy a program to manage this. I rely on Firefox. Although, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I was reformatting my computer, until I found this Password Exporter Plugin.

Install that plugin.

Immediate back up the file to your external (like I did.)

After reformatting, reinstall the plugin.

Go to the plugin, hit restore and you should be good to go!

If you Received an Error Restoring Your Password

When I reformatted, reinstalled this plugin, and hit restore passwords, it wouldn’t let me. I was scared because when I went to import, I received this error:

Now, I wasn’t about to give up and you shouldn’t either.

Find that file and open it in Firefox. What happens is that, when it opens up, it will show the error! Look at the error I received:

As you can tell, Firefox pointed out the issue for me. As you can tell, there is an extra quotation mark.

Simply, go to Notepad, Notepad++, or Notepad2 or any other Notepad (DEFINITELY NOT WORDPAD) and fix the issue by deleting the extra quotation mark or whatever issue you have.

Go back to the passwords importer and reimport.

Everything should be perfectly fine now!

Part 1: How to Partition and Reformat a Computer using Windows 7

Part 2: How to Create a Partition and Set Up a Reformatted Computer using Windows 7

Part 3: Quickly Restoring Your Computer Programs without Ruining it This Time

Part 4: Restoring Passwords and Bookmarks to Firefox After Reformatting (here)

You have already UPDATED and Downloaded all the Drivers you need. Now you need programs!

Get Most Programs Quick

My favorite website when reformatting a new computer or after I buy a new computer is Ninite. It makes getting most of your programs you need quick and simple. Just need internet access.

On Ninite, choose everything you use. Look what I had to install:

I made it small because the list is so long. As you can tell, I need a lot of programs and such, but it is all worth it for web designing and such. You might not need as many, need different programs, or need more! Besides, this is just the basic ones. I had to re-install Microsoft Office and still need to install Photoshop and such.

Now, you may be wondering why I said without ruining your computer this time. Hopefully, you learned why your computer sucked in the first place. Simple – What you viewed on the internet and what you downloaded. Don’t repeat! If you do, be smart about it.

Part 1: How to Partition and Reformat a Computer using Windows 7

Part 2: How to Create a Partition and Set Up a Reformatted Computer using Windows 7

Part 3: Quickly Restoring Your Computer Programs without Ruining it This Time (here)

Part 4: Restoring Passwords and Bookmarks to Firefox After Reformatting

We left off still in DISKPART in the command window. If you aren’t, go back to yesterday’s tutorial to do so.

Creating a Partition

All you have to do is type create partition primary. Very easy. That is all you have to do unless you want to create more partitions with specific sizes.

If you do want to create a partition with a certain size (say for example, 100GB) type create partition primary size=102400.

You need to do some math to get that: 1024MB = 1GB which equals 1024×100 = 102400.

You will need to format it and label it. Also determine the file structure, but I will show using NTFS.

So after you create a certain size, type format fs=ntfs label=”Windows 7″ (or any other file structure or name you want)

Once done, type active to make it active. You can do this as many times as you want, just leave enough room for sizes.

Set Up Windows 7

Once done formatting, type exit to get out of DISKPART.

Type exit again to get out of the command.

From there, just follow the installer and instead of formatting using the Windows 7 installer method, just choose the partition as you have already formatted!

Give it time and you are done! Welcome to Windows 7 (again).

Be sure to change the boot sequence back!

Also, be sure to install all missing drivers and UPDATE IMMEDIATELY!

Tomorrow’s post will be about Quickly Restoring Your Computer without Ruining it This Time

Part 1: How to Partition and Reformat a Computer using Windows 7

Part 2: How to Create a Partition and Set Up a Reformatted Computer using Windows 7 (here)

Part 3: Quickly Restoring Your Computer Programs without Ruining it This Time

Part 4: Restoring Passwords and Bookmarks to Firefox After Reformatting

Change Boot Up Sequence

You need to change your boot-up to boot to CD. On a Dell machine it’s usually F2 and on my HP it was ESC or F2.

Go through the BIOs until you found boot sequence. Move CD to the top, and you are good.

Restart and boot from Windows 7 Disk

Not a big deal, but I realized something and it took me 4 tries to realize this. If you reformat via Windows 7 disk, it makes a 100mb partition for a weird reason. NO NEED TO DO THIS! There is a simple work around.

DISKPART at System Setup

When the language choices pop-up from the Windows 7 disk, don’t choose anything…yet!

Hold Shift and hit F10.

You will get to the command screen from here. Type Diskpart.

Now, type list disk. It will list all your partitions.

Selecting Partitions and Formatting them

Now, type select disk # (Don’t actually write #, replace # with the disk partition shown. Most likely, if you only have one partition, the number will be 0, so type select disk 0 if that is the case.)

Now type clean all. (You are going get a blinking cursor telling you that clean all is working like in the second snip down. RELAX! Let it do it’s thing. This takes from 20 minutes to a few hours depending on the size and type of hard drive. Go out to eat or something and come back to this.)

*Warning* If you have a computer such an HP, you will delete the recovery partition. I did not know this and I deleted it all. *Warning*

Stay tuned to tomorrow’s post where I create the partition and set-up Windows 7.

Part 1: How to Partition and Reformat a Computer using Windows 7 (here)

Part 2: How to Create a Partition and Set Up a Reformatted Computer using Windows 7

Part 3: Quickly Restoring Your Computer Programs without Ruining it This Time

Part 4: Restoring Passwords and Bookmarks to Firefox After Reformatting

A few months ago, my aunt came to me asking for a website. The whole idea stemmed from recently losing her job like many, but unlike those many, she decided to do something about the situation. This is where she came in asking me for a website. I won’t lie, I was hesitant about making a website for her. There are a lot of factors to the website. Many of these factors I, myself, have not even stepped foot in, let alone conquered. Originally, I told her everything. I wasn’t about to dedicate my time until she understood everything I was going to tell her. My aunt and her friend Gail were very open to all I had to said and were ready to learn.

I must say, I was amazed by their drive to learn.

The Start

I am not going to exaggerate on anything in this article because that would just taint this article. Before they even started the website, I talked with them for about 10+ hours preparing everything. This talking session included everything.

1. Domain name
2. Idea
3. Logo
4. Slogan
5. Traffic
6. Ideas
7. Everything.

This is some of the issues discussed. Did I mention that my aunt and her friend knew hardly anything about their computers. I wasn’t sure they knew how to turn on the laptops without the stickers guiding them to everything. I was in for a treat! OH BOY!

The Steps Discussed

The first thing I asked my aunt was what did she want. This turned out to be quite a question as she wasn’t able to answer appropriately and completely. Knowing the internet very well and all the blogs out there, I was wondering what type of blog they decided to run. After showing them all types of websites from http://bunziez.com to http://makemoneyontheinternet.com to http://netbookreviews.com to http://johnchow.com and everything in between. The reason these sites were chosen is because they are all different types of blogs to choose from. After setting on the fact that my aunt wants to make money, but more importantly share her stories and ideas, she should do a combination of the same.

After deciding that she was ready for the blog world and the type of blog she wants to create, the name was an issue. I wish I could write out the major humor in this, but I can only try to explain this. My aunt spent all day bouncing names off of my family and I. Every type of name possible. At one point when I was in another room, she thought of a name and felt as if it was perfect. That was until I heard it and thought of high-priced escorts or prostitutes. So after bouncing names for a bit longer, they came up with: http://www.unemployedwoman.com/

It was like magic from there. I personally came up with the design of the site. Using Studiopress, I was able to make it look awesome. That along with their amazing content, they were able to start a blog.

Now, you might not understand the triumph in this. The fact of this is that they went from barely understanding the blog, the internet, and computers at a whole. Marketing was a whole new terrain for them. Writing successful blog posts to make money is still taking them some time, but I must say, they are learning and if they can do it, you can too!

Check it out! http://www.unemployedwoman.com/

Check out their rap video. It is an interesting take in marketing!

I must say that not having my laptop has been quite hard on me. I never realized how much of a role it plays on my life until recently. I basically live off my computer. Everything I do is through the computer. What I want to accomplish, a successful monetized website, is on the computer. Its a very difficult process considering according to many others, I am constantly doing it wrong. Although, this is not the point I am trying to make with this blog post. Anyway, I spend way too much time on the computer, but to be completely honest, I love it. I truly enjoy spending my time learning, testing, and trying to accomplish new things.

My issue, which I want to tell everyone is to backup and do it frequently. I was afraid I lost almost everything on my hard drive. Luckily, it was only my motherboard, not my hard drive. Unfortunately, I am lazy and don’t trust myself with deconstructing a computer, so I payed Geek Squad to do it for me. They were able to thankfully save everything. I am very fortunate for this and I now will learn from my mistake. From now on, I shall back up frequently and hopefully never have this problem again. You should too. I also should learn how to make my blog posts more exciting and boring because even I am bored with these posts!