Formating hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jerome Roy
  • Start date Start date
J

Jerome Roy

Help, anybody. I am trying to reformat my hard drive so I can get rid of all
the junk on it. I would like to do a clean install of XP and start over. How
do I reformat my hard drive? I've tried several things but they do not work.
Any suggestions?
 
Place your CD (Win XP or System Restore) in your CD ROM drive. Reboot the
computer. If it doesn't boot from the CD you need to go into the bios and
set the boot sequence to the CD drive first.

Once booted to the CD, follow the on-screen instructions to do a new install
not a repair install.
 
Written My A Guy Named Moe, Not Me.
This may or may not help you
----------------------------------------------------
Formatting the hard drive

Make sure you have a boot floppy disk in the computer.
Allow the computer to reboot, or just shut off the
computer and turn it back on with the disk inserted in
the floppy drive. After the computer reboots, you should
get the A:\> prompt.

You should already have the format.com file on the disk.
At the A:\> prompt, type on the keyboard

format c: /s <enter> ( for bootable drives like drive C:)

format d: <enter> ( for non-bootable drives like drive
D:)

{ the word format is followed by a space then the forward
slash the letter S and the enter key. }

you will receive the message...

==========================================
WARNING: ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK
DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format (Y/N) ?
==========================================

select the Yes option by pressing the Y key on the
keyboard and press <enter>

the message.....

=====================
Formatting xxxxM
......xx percent completed.
=====================

....will be shown, and the formatting will take place. You
should now see the 'percent complete' value increase as
the drive is formatted.

when the format is finished, you will see the message...

==============
Formatting xxxM
Format complete.
System transferred

Volume label (11 characters, Enter for none )?
==============

The cursor will be flashing on the bottom of the screen,
waiting for you to name the newly formatted drive. Type
in a name (11 characters or less, don't use spaces) and
press <enter>. You can use a simple name if you like such
as "driveC" or "drive1", it really does not matter what
its called.

After you press the <enter> key you will receive the
final screen showing the drive statistics as shown below
for an imaginary 100 megabyte hard drive.

==================================
106614784 bytes total disk space
......186368 bytes used by system
106428416 bytes available on disk

.....2048 bytes in each allocation unit.
...51967 allocation units available on disk.

Volume Serial Number is 1234-5C68
===================================

Finally you will see the A:\> prompt. At this point the
drive is ready to be used as the primary boot drive.
Remove the diskette from the floppy drive and reboot the
computer by either pressing the reboot key or by turning
the computer OFF and back On.

Finally you will need to install your programs using the
provided floppy disks or CD-ROM disks.
 
Except this will not work if the drive is formatted as NTFS. This will only
work on FAT 16 & 32 drives
 
Hi, ZZZ.

I suppose Moe is retired now, drawing his Social Security? ;^}

Those instructions are absolutely correct - but perhaps 10 years old. The
example shows a 100 MB (NOT GB) hard drive using 2 KB clusters - most likely
FAT16, not FAT32.

For WinXP, the instructions are somewhat simpler:

Step 1: Boot from WinXP CD-ROM.

Step 2: Say Yes when it asks if you want to format the drive. You can
partition or repartition it first, too, if you like.

That's for the "system partition" (and, if different, the "boot volume")
when you are first installing WinXP. After WinXP is up and running, go to
Disk Management (at the Run prompt, type: diskmgmt.msc). Use Disk
Management to create, delete and format primary partitions and extended
partitions and logical drives - and to assign or reassign drive letters.

RC
 
Greetings --

Simply boot from the WinXP installation CD. You'll be offered the
opportunity to delete, create, and format partitions as part of the
installation process. (You may need to re-arrange the order of boot
devices in the PC's BIOS to boot from the CD.)

HOW TO Install Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;316941

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp


Bruce Chambers

--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH
 
Back
Top