Doing Clean Install and need advice

Doing a clean install following a repair install on my desktop computer that still didn't cure a continuing 'start up and freeze up' problem that had been discussed on this forum several days ago. The repair install worked fine for one day and then the old problems recurred, so time to bite the bullet and clean it all up. This possibility was suggested, and of course that is exactly what happened.

The advice I ask for is how to best make use of my laptop, which has 95% or more of the items presently on the desktop, and my 500G external hard drive. I want to get all of the stuff back and working on the desktop and just don't want to find out later that I missed the simple way to do so. First, what should I do to clean off the HD? Should I wipe it with Partition Wizard? I want to make sure that whatever has been causing my problem is gone for good.

Suggestions and advice appreciated. I'm planning on using Brink's fine instructions for doing the reinstall. Roving

Many folks on the Forum recommend using Diskpart command.

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Follow only the Best Practices and use only the tools and methods given in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 if you want to get and maintain a perfect reinstall. Steps are the same for retail.

Read the note for HP users at the end to understand how to judge which HP OEM partitions to keep.

The issue with not completely wiping the machine is that Windows sets a file with Windows.OLD file which might hold onto some of the issues you are currently experiencing. A reinstall and wipe would be the best practice. The method that I use, which is unconventional and can be sometimes dangerous to the machine is loading an OS on a USB and use that method to erase and install an OS.

That's nonsense. Window.old is only a file which will be created to contain the entire older OS if a Custom Upgrade install is done over XP or Vista without booting the installer. It has nothing to do with performance or transferring corruption from the old OS.

And wiping the HD with Diskpart Clean Command is only necessary if there is suspected bad code in the boot sector which is blocking install. Running Diskpart Clean All command is not needed for any issue other than making data irretrievable by most methods.

The OP has an HP which means he needs to weigh carefully whether to keep the Recovery and OEM tools partitions during a Reinstall. These partitions can still function in newer HP's after reinstall to run Factory Recovery if it is every needed, or run bootable Diagnostics from the tool partition. Either way he should make his Recovery Disks to have a secondary method.

All of this is explained in detail Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which contains the Best Practices for reinstalling Win7 based on countless thousands we've helped with here at the top tech forum on the web.

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions. Yesterday I did a clean install using my Windows 7 disc and it all went quite well. I used it's built in function to clean all of my partitions and then later I used Partition wizard to add labels to each of the partitions. This method keeps the original partition sizes as I had before and now I just need to copy a lot of things to each of them and and do a bunch of reinstalling to get back into working order. It all works fine and restarted a number of times now with no sign of the problem that I could never get rid of before.

Thanks to all! Roving