- The factory inspects that laptop to make sure everything works right, and then ships it out to a retailer that deals in refurbs.

- The refurb retailer then sells it to you at a great discount off original price.

Buying a refurb can literally save you hundreds.

================== 3. Online Auctions ==================

You can always logon to an auction website and find a great deal on a used laptop. However, beware!

Buying anything used carries with it some risk. Buying a used laptop carries more risk than most people should be willing to take.

When you buy a used laptop from a private party, you don't get any sort of warranty beyond DOA.

DOA stands for "dead on arrival", a common auction term that means seller guarantees item will work when it arrives at your house.

But what happens if your laptop dies two weeks after it arrives? You're out of luck, that's what.

There are enough bargains available on warrantied laptops that all but most meager budgets should be able to avoid buying used.

Stick to clearance and refurb machines and you'll save yourself hundreds on your next laptop computer.

Copyright (c) 2004 HowToBuyALaptop.com.

After that you will see on screen following text: "WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST! Proceed with Format (Y/N)?" and if you really want to continue, type [Y] and then press Enter.

Your screen should display size of your drive and a countdown in percentage of formatting completed. Depending on your computer's speed and size of drive it can take from a few minutes to over 15 minutes.

When it reaches 100% complete, you will see a new message: FORMAT COMPLETE. SYSTEM TRANSFERRED. This message is to indicate that files required to boot your computer from hard drive have been copied from floppy to hard drive.

The computer can now boot from hard drive without a boot disk in floppy drive.

The last message that will appear on your screen is following: "Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)?" You can either press any key to continue, or simply to press Enter. And now, you can finally begin to load your Operating System.

Keep in mind that you can receive an error message, which says "insufficient memory to load system files". If you do receive such message, do not worry. It is caused by lack of a memory manager loaded at boot and your PC can only access first 1mg of ram memory.

You can handle this situation with two options. The first one is to omit /s switch when formatting. You should do it by typing this: FORMAT C: and then press Enter. Then when format is complete, manually add system files to your hard drive by using this command: SYS C: and press Enter again.

The second solution is to load a memory manager in order to overcome this issue. If you don't have any you can easily download one from one of million sites on Internet.

You see, we have finally reached end of How To Format A Hard Drive and consequently – end of this article. Now you surely know how to format a hard drive. But, once again, don't play with commands if you are not serious about formating a hard drive.

Even if data is restorable you may do something wrong to your computer. That is why, you should be careful! And now, good luck!

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