Do not shake or drop the hard drives. Even an accidental drop can cause internal mechanical damage to the drive platters.

Be aware, too, that you should always create a Windows system restore point before using Advanced Registry Optimizer 2010–or any Registry cleaner–in case it makes changes that cause your PC problems..

If your hard drive is encrypted (with something like BitLocker), you may have to follow a different recovery procedure, Arthur Shi, technical writing team lead at iFixit, tells Popular Mechanics.

The simplest way to do that is with a factory reset, which wipes your data from the hard drive and returns the computer to its original settings. With a Chromebook, a Mac, or a Windows PC, it ...

Wiping your device is considered the "full nuclear" option when it comes to tackling malware. You wipe all data on your infected drive with the theory being that malware can't survive the process.

I like doing clean installations because Windows has so much garbage left behind.<P>Maybe a new BIOS for the laptop would make the cd-rom drive bootable? Yeah right! I'm dreaming.