Reformating Vista. Please Help

Before i get into it, i have a laptop acer aspire 3050, and it came with vista instaled. When i first got this laptop, it said to burn the boot cd off the hard drive. I did this, and put the cd off to the side.

Now my problem, I have vista, who has become corrupt, what i mean is, i will shut down my computer, to have it turn back on during the night (by itself). It often refuses to shut down, i tell it to sleep, it restarts, i cant run my pc without having a virus scanner running as otherwise it is too slow.
Yes i know, it sounds like i have a virus. I have run every virus software, googled the problem so many times, and nothing fixes it, have been told to reformat pc.

The problem is, i have no clue how to reformat my pc. I am backing my pc up as we speak, but i was hoping someone was able to give me a step by step guide on how to format my laptop (never done anything like this before)

<side note-not sure if this will help, but including it anyway>
on the vista restore disk i burnt when i first got pc, there are folders that say
acer, I386
images
patch
and files called
RCD.DAT
SCD.DAT
SETCOPY.BAT
STCDBOOT.ISO
WINNT.SIF

The I386 folder should have all the files needed to reinstall the OS.

To do this, simply load the CD into the drive on your laptop, and boot the computer from the CD/DVD drive. Follow the instructions on the screen to reinstall the OS. I like to do a full format before installing which you should be able to do from the CD as well during the install.

In2Photos wrote in post #7769022
The I386 folder should have all the files needed to reinstall the OS.

To do this, simply load the CD into the drive on your laptop, and boot the computer from the CD/DVD drive. Follow the instructions on the screen to reinstall the OS. I like to do a full format before installing which you should be able to do from the CD as well during the install.

by boot, do u mean restart it with the cd in it?
I am not very computer literate

iddycourt wrote in post #7769025
by boot, do u mean restart it with the cd in it?
I am not very computer literate

Yes. It should come up with a prompt for you to boot from CD/DVD or from the hard disk. Choose the CD/DVD.

If not very computer literate try to read up on some tutorials. There is more info written already than we can write here. Here is what Microsoft says:

http://windowshelp.mic​rosoft.com …53e-eba44f0522671033.mspx

EDIT: Do you have the drivers disk(s) that came with your laptop? Those are very important. If not, do you have another machine that will have access to the internet to download the needed drivers?

see, the thing is, my computer came with no disks.
it came with an option to burn boot disk from the computer.
that is it
i am even more confused after reading that site as it says it needs a product key, well, i didnt get one of those either

iddycourt wrote in post #7769068
see, the thing is, my computer came with no disks.
it came with an option to burn boot disk from the computer.
that is it
i am even more confused after reading that site as it says it needs a product key, well, i didnt get one of those either

You shouldn't need a product key based on your type of reinstall.

And perhaps the disc you burned also includes the drivers. Not sure about that last part.

i have just downloaded and burnt the drivers to my hard drive.
here goes nothing

i havent reformated yet, i decided to wait 24 hours, to see if any members have had experience with the same problem i have before i do anything

iddycourt wrote in post #7769281
i havent reformated yet, i decided to wait 24 hours, to see if any members have had experience with the same problem i have before i do anything

Well, honestly, some of the symptoms you mention don't sound software related. Your laptop should never just start itself in the middle of the night! That is NOT software related. But a virus or other would definitely be best fixed by a reinstall.

OK, I'll comment. I am always leery of doing something like this without being able to at least get back to where I started. The only sure way I know to do this is to make an image of the system as it stands now with something like Acronis. Not sure you have room to partition your HD and add the image and I'm not sure if Acronis will allow booting from the CD and loading from an external HD but I would think a backup of some kind would be real nice.

And then after the install works flawlessly you can do another image with Acronis and you are all set the next time this happens.....

It's likely what you have isn't a Vista install disk but a image disk. This means the actual image for your laptop will be on a hidden partition.

This should contain all drivers and data it needs to restore the HD back to factory settings.

I googled this endlessly. And was told to restore to factory settings. It has been stuck at 25% for an hour. Wat do I do

Are you restoring from the CD or was there a restore partition on your HD?

From the cd. I have my windows xp disks. I'll just instal them. Is there a way to force computer to instal them

Was there any indication of what it was doing? Some of the processes can be rather lengthy although an hour seems excessive.