format a hard drive in xp

  • Thread starter Thread starter Humpty
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Humpty

help me please.

I have just acquired an old pc (from my employer) for my daughter and it
needs to be completely reformatted (its full of old work stuff )
my problem is how do I do this in win xp?
 
help me please.

I have just acquired an old pc (from my employer) for my daughter and it
needs to be completely reformatted (its full of old work stuff )
my problem is how do I do this in win xp?
Click to expand...

After you hook it up and have it jumpered correctly - WIN XP should
recognize it and even read it if it was formatted already by a Win
system.

You go into My Computer /Control Panel/Administrative Tools / Computer
Management/Disk Management

Then you should see all the Disks displaced in graphlike bars.
Click the drive letter if the drive with the Right Mouse button and
youll see a pop down menu with Format / Delete Partition and stuff
like that.

You can delete the partition and then create a partition and then
format.

Just make sure you click on the right drive letter of course.
 
the pc has only one hard drive and xp won't let me format it (because its
running the op.system)
how can I reformat it before xp boots up?
thanks
 
Humpty said:
help me please.

I have just acquired an old pc (from my employer) for my daughter and it
needs to be completely reformatted (its full of old work stuff )
my problem is how do I do this in win xp?
Click to expand...
Insert XP CD in the drive and reboot from it -- then just follow the
directions. You'll need to be careful to make sure that you actually get a
low-level reformat and install rather than just the installation of yet
another OS in another partition. If in doubt you can download a program like
The Eraser from http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ which will enable you to
completely lobotomize the machine before doing the install. In either case
you will need to have an XP installation disc to work from.
 
the pc has only one hard drive and xp won't let me format it (because its
running the op.system)
how can I reformat it before xp boots up?
thanks
Click to expand...

DUHHHHH , I thought I read that you got an OLD HARD DRIVE and that
your were adding it to your daughters system.

You cant unless you have the WIN XP disk. Then you just boot up with
the CD and it automatically goes into a screen that asks you if you
want to format and delete and all that stuff.
 
ok...I have a legit disk
thanks for your help.
[email protected] said:
DUHHHHH , I thought I read that you got an OLD HARD DRIVE and that
your were adding it to your daughters system.

You cant unless you have the WIN XP disk. Then you just boot up with
the CD and it automatically goes into a screen that asks you if you
want to format and delete and all that stuff.
Click to expand...
 
Insert XP CD in the drive and reboot from it -- then just follow the
directions. You'll need to be careful to make sure that you actually get a
low-level reformat and install rather than just the installation of yet
another OS in another partition. If in doubt you can download a program like
The Eraser from http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ which will enable you to
completely lobotomize the machine before doing the install. In either case
you will need to have an XP installation disc to work from.
Click to expand...


Completely unnecessary...

Just boot from the xp disc, reinstall xp being sure to format the
current partition (don't try to repair the one there, in other words).

You might have to change your boot order in the bios for it to start
from the cd.

And john, for future reference, the format done by the xp cd is not low
level. That is something else entirely.
 
Insert the Win XP CD to the drive and boot up from the CD-ROM drive.
Delete the present partition, recreate one and install Win XP to it.

Since you have mentioned the computer is quite old, make sure it meet
the basic requirement. Actually, you need a middle-fast computer to
run Win XP.
 
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