fdisk

[Ted Gervais]

Hi everyone.
I am running XP home and I am trying to format and paritition a harddrive.
I brought up a DOS cmd screen and typed in fdisk and nothing happened??
Shouldn't FDISK have come up?

If not, than how does one run FDISK with XP (home)??

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi everyone.
I am running XP home and I am trying to format and paritition a
harddrive. I brought up a DOS cmd screen and typed in fdisk and
nothing happened?? Shouldn't FDISK have come up?

If not, than how does one run FDISK with XP (home)??

With Disk Management. Go to Start | Programs | Administrative Tools |
Computer management | Disk Management.

 

[gls858]

Hi everyone.
I am running XP home and I am trying to format and paritition a harddrive.
I brought up a DOS cmd screen and typed in fdisk and nothing happened??
Shouldn't FDISK have come up?

If not, than how does one run FDISK with XP (home)??

Simply boot from the CD. All the tools you need to format and partition the
drive are there. Make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the CD as the
first option.

gls858

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Simply boot from the CD. All the tools you need to format and
partition the drive are there. Make sure your BIOS is set to boot
from the CD as the first option.

A clarification to my post: I had assumed he was trying to format and
partition a second drive in his computer. If, as you apparently assumed,
he's trying to format the drive Windows is installed so he can to reinstall
Windows, then my answer is wrong and yours is of course correct.

 

[RobertVA]

Hi everyone.
I am running XP home and I am trying to format and paritition a harddrive.
I brought up a DOS cmd screen and typed in fdisk and nothing happened??
Shouldn't FDISK have come up?

If not, than how does one run FDISK with XP (home)??

From the Windows XP Help and Support Center:

"DiskpartCreates and deletes partitions on a hard drive. The diskpart
command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console.

diskpart [/add | /delete] [device_name | drive_name | partition_name]
[size]"

Search for Diskpart in the Help and Support Center for details.

 

[gls858]

A clarification to my post: I had assumed he was trying to format and
partition a second drive in his computer. If, as you apparently assumed,
he's trying to format the drive Windows is installed so he can to reinstall
Windows, then my answer is wrong and yours is of course correct.

You make a good point. I assumed. Guess we both should have asked for
more info

gls858

 

[LVTravel]

To finish up what you have already heard from gls858 and Ken
Blake, the FDISK program is a DOS "external" program that
needs to be run from a DOS system boot disk (either floppy
or hard.) Since XP does not have DOS, only a DOS emulator,
FDISK is not available in XP.

As Ken said, if the disk you are attempting to partition
(that is what FDISK was used for) a disk that is NOT the
system disk, use the disk management tool in "Manage" under
My Computer. If you are attempting to partition the System
disk (where XP is installed and booting from) you need to
either use 3rd party software (to split the drive into more
than the current partitions) or the bootable XP install CD
to delete the XP program and partition. You would then need
to partition and format the drive's partitions and install
all the OS and software again on the boot partition.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Hi everyone.
I am running XP home and I am trying to format and paritition a harddrive.
I brought up a DOS cmd screen and typed in fdisk and nothing happened??
Shouldn't FDISK have come up?

If not, than how does one run FDISK with XP (home)??

You don't. FDisk is an old MS-DOS utility that is neither
available or needed in WinXP. All legitimate WinXP installation CDs are
bootable and have the capability of deleting, creating, and formatting
partitions.

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


--

Bruce Chambers

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[Patrick Keenan]

Hi everyone.
I am running XP home and I am trying to format and paritition a harddrive.
I brought up a DOS cmd screen and typed in fdisk and nothing happened??
Shouldn't FDISK have come up?

If not, than how does one run FDISK with XP (home)??

The XP command-line tool is actually named "diskpart", not "fdisk". The
commands and interface are different, so read the help text first and be
sure you understand it.

And as with fdisk, you can do a lot of serious irreversible damage very
quickly by accident.

HTH
-pk

 

[Patrick Keenan]

From the Windows XP Help and Support Center:

"DiskpartCreates and deletes partitions on a hard drive. The diskpart
command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console.

That's not entirely correct - diskpart can be run in a command window on a
running XP Pro machine. I just checked on *this* running XP Pro machine

I often use diskpart when preparing disks and I don't think I ever use it
from the recovery console.

HTH
-pk

diskpart [/add | /delete] [device_name | drive_name | partition_name]
[size]"

Search for Diskpart in the Help and Support Center for details.