Need to Format xp? HELP PLEASE!!!

[Oilman]

Hey guys!, i need your help. I just installed WinXp on my comp. I clicked clean install, but it just installed over Win ME. So i would like to Format my hard Drive and do a clean install from a blank hard drive. I tryed using fdisk, but i was unable to format my drive with it. I checked off ntfs as my file system when i installed Win Xp. I also made a Win Xp start up disk, but i am not very good with DOS, so if anyone can tell me how to format my hard drive and reinstall Win Xp from a clean hard drive i would greatly appreciate it, Thanks

PS. I have Win Xp Proffetional.

 

[Digital-G]

You will need to ensure that your floppy drive is a boot device (preferably second). Create a startup disk using some version of Windows. Slap that disk in the floppy drive and restart the machine. When the DOS menu comes up, choose Minimal Boot (or something to that effect, can't remember text verbatim). When you get to a DOS prompt, type fdisk. Use fdisk to partition your drive (break it up into segments). You will need to format each segment before you can do anything with them (fdisk should prompt you to do this). After you have formatted the last segment, place your XP disk in the cd-rom drive and install away. Make sure your cd-rom is also listed as a boot device.

 

[FALCON]

How to Format WinXP

There are a couple of ways to do this first I will show how the easy way, and only if your windows cd is bootable!

if so get into your bios screen, usually pressing the DEL key repeatedly until the screen appears, find "boot sequence" selection (usually under boot) and make ATAPI CDROM or just CDROM your first device. with that done hit F10 and Y to save and exit. have your Windows CD in drive and it should boot to the CD. When it starts you will be given an option to press F6 to load SCSI drivers, IGNORE this unless you need to.

It will take about 5 min or less for the install files to load. Once loaded you will be prompted to Press Enter to continue or i believe F3 to quit or exit something like that anyhows. Press enter. a quick scan of your ide/scsi bus will be done and a window will appear with your partition(s) listed. Using your arrow keys highlight the first partition NOT THE 8 MEG ONE THOUGH. now press D i believe if not L to delete the current partition. at the next screen you will press the one you didnt press just a min ago. read the screens carefully and you should be ok.

Anyhows do this for all the partitions you have, once that is done highlight the first Unpartitioned Space and press C for create partition. when done it will ask how larger you want it here you must backspace off the current default entre to enter new and remember 1000mb=1gigabyte ie 10 gig = 10000 in that field and so on.

you will only be albe to do the first partition here dont worry you will do the others later on once windows is installed.

Once you have the partition cfreated then you will need to format it. windows will prompt you to do so. Yes as you did before it is ok to use NTFS it is or at least was more secure than FAT, but remember if you do NTFS you will not be able to read that partition in DOS thus no file or data recovery if windows crashes.

once you hit enter to format take about a 45-1 hour break, go do something whatever it is all automated from here, towards the end there will be a couple of mouse clicks and thats about it.

good luck
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