Not Sure if we Clean Installed Vista 32bit??

Hello and Im sorry to be a little vague however here goes,,,
we have had our Dell Dimension E520 desktop pc for around 5yrs and its been getting slower and freezeing etc.
We have all the discs that came with the machine inc the Dell "Reinstallation" disc. After copying all the things we wanted to keep to discs and a set of instructions to my wifes laptop we started what we thought would be a complete wipe and reinstall of our Vista. We loaded the Reinstall disc and opted for "custom installation" and then we think, followed the instructions. What surprised us was that the process only took minutes rather than hours as we had been lead to expect, and then we found that we did not have to re-install any drivers! and we undestood that we would need to do this?
The computer is however running much better now but we think that this might be because there is now very little on it, and a recent problem that I have had where I can Recieve but not Send in Windows mail is still there.
Does anyone know of a fairly foolproof set of re-installation instructions that we could try and from what I have said above what do you think we did?
Many thanks in advance, Steve

Hello and welcome to the Forums , see if this is what you need : http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/88236-repair-install-vista.html
Post back results please .

Hello "Yard Dog" and many thanks indeed for your help.
I have looked at the link you suggested but I see that its a way of reinstalling Vista but without loseing files and things, but we think that what we need to do after a number of years of use is a complete wipe and reinstall from scratch, I think its what they call a "Clean Install" and one thing that Im hopeing this would fix would be my recent inability to reply or send in Windows Mail.
I see that at the bottom of the article there is also a long list of other related instructions and one is a run through for a Clean Install, reading this, one thing that strikes me is that early on in the process we should have been asked to enter our Vista Product Key, however as I think I mentioned previously, this did not happen when we did it and again I now doubt that we actually performed clean install.
We still have all our backed up files on discs and I think we might try again following the instructions in your link.
Can I also ask you about "Partitions" When were running the install we came to a screen which showed a partition of around 10gig and a much larger section, we installed into the larger area and then, not knowing what to do with the 10gig that was still sitting there we deleted it!! As far as I know we now do not have any partition unless the vista reinstall disc reinstated it, do we need a partition,,is it where a back up of some kind sits? I hope you dont mind all these questains, but as you can probably guess were not too sure of what were doing,,,
Once again, many thanks,
Steve.

I would go ahead and do the clean install again, Once you have that, we can look at that issue of the partition. http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/117366-clean-install-full-version-vista.html Notice step 11 here on this tutorial. Post back results please.

Many thanks for your prompt reply "Yard Dog" just waiting on friends for dinner to arrive so it will be tommorow when we have another go,,I will let you know how we get along,
Steve

Steve, I would drop the disk in the computer there is a formatting section that will wipe it and do the install of fresh version..

Hello again Yard Dog, well Im afraid it was only this afternoon that I managed to get my wife (who is a little more computer literate than I am) to try again, we followed the excellent instructions in the link above and I tried to note what happened, in fact everything seemed to follow the instructions with the correct "screenshots" displayed, however when we passed Step4 we jumped straight to step 7(or8) which is the User Agreement Screen, without a peep of screen 5 where we should enter the Product Code. Despite this we did come to the screen where we were able to select "Format".
We did not have to reinstall any drivers as the PC was connected to the internet and we guess it found and downloaded them itself, and quite quickly we had the PC running well and I think that we also have a partition as well, though Im not quite sure how to check this myself.
The only problem now is that I still have the Mail problem, we downloaded the new version of Windows Mail but I still find that whilst I can recieve Mail I cannot send, given what we have done above in reformatting, do you think that my mail problem is not after all within our PC but is with the server? And lastly, reading the above, do you think that we will have properley "reformatted" our PC?
I look forward to hearing from you and thanks once again,
Steve.

Hi again, glad you got it reinstalled with no real issues, can you tell me who or what mail program within Windows mail is set up for you to receive your mail ? I have Comcast which used to have what was called Outlook, and i had to contact them for it to receive and send properly. Who provides your mail for you in your Windows Mail program ?
As far as the partition, you should be fine, You will see in System restore two partitions One should be PQSERVICE and one would be OS C:
Here is a posting on PQSERVICE : http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/275190-pqservice-acer-hidden-partition.html

Post me details on your mail provider you are using in Windows Mail . Your ISP may have to be contacted to assist , depends on what you use.

Many thanks to you both for taking an intrest in our problem, its much appriciated, however the good news is that I have solved the mail problem,,,
We have always used Windows Mail and we were originally with an internet provider called Toucan, this was bought out by Tiscali, then Pipex,, Pipex have in turn now been taken over by TalkTalk and around the time when this switch happened we developed the mail problem. We spoke with the helpdesk who talked us through the settings (SMTP etc) but to no avail, their conclusion was that the problem must lie with the Windows Mail,,anyway last night before turning in I wandered through the TalkTalk forums and noticed a post which stated that regardless of what your incoming address was (mine is still the original Toucan one) to send mail one has to have TalkTalk.net as the outgoing,,,I managed to change this myself and "bingo" the mail is working once again.
It just goes to show that even when speaking with the help desks you cannot be absolutely sure that your being given the correct information! This evening I will look at the Partitions, but I have to say that so far its all been worth the trouble as the old pc is now flying along.
Once again, many thanks for all your help,
Steve.

Great news, going into Tools, account, highlighting , properties and then going through the needed tabs can be tricky, glad you found that bit of forum news reference the settings for outgoing. I have made a written notes of my setting in notepad as well as a hard copy with pen and paper to have handy if i need to reset mine. Thanks for using Vista Forums for your computer issues. Feel free to use the tutorials in here as you will find them quite informative and have a happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Many thanks indeed for the good wishes, thats very kind of you, and sound advice about writing down the important details.
Im now going to float off a post about Windows Live Mail,,,,
once again, many thanks for your help,
Steve.