Light the Fuse and Stand Back

Let's say you live in a house that keeps the rain out just fine, but it's not very pleasant to live in because it's fallen into slumlord disrepair. Mice crawl behind the walls. Roaches snack on your toast crumbs. The neighbors steal your garden tools through a broken window. And the mailbox is jammed full of furnace -cleaning flyers and pizza delivery menus . What do you do?

Well, you can call in the exterminator, patch the windows , threaten the postman, and stop eating toast. It's going to be expensive, inconvenient, and take a lot of time. Plus there's no guarantee that your defensive efforts are going to turn the house into a Barbie Dream Home.

Maybe what you need to do is drop a wheelbarrow full of TNT down the basement stairs, light a match, and run. When the smoke clears you can rebuild the house from the ground up.

That's what we're going to do to your computer in this chapter. We're going to wipe away Windows and start fresh.