formatting

[peter kay]

Can anyone please help.I have 2 hard drives in my machine
and want to re-format them both. I am on XP now and want
to reformat them with XP again. I have professional
edition and only the CD not a floppy boot up disc.

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeese help a computer iliterate muppet

 

[Chris Lanier]

The Windows XP CD is bootable and contains all the tools necessary to
partition and format your drive. Follow this procedure and allow Windows XP
to partition and format your drive:

1. Open your BIOS and set your CD Drive as the first bootable device.
2. Insert your Windows XP CD in the CD Drive and reboot your omputer.
3. You'll see a message to boot to the CD....follow the instructions.
4. The setup menu will appear and you should elect to delete the existing
Windows partitions, then create a new partition, then format the primary
partition (preferably NTFS) and proceed to install Windows XP.

5. Clean Install Windows XP
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
[Courtesy of Michael Stevens, MS-MVP]

6. After installing Windows XP, be sure and visit the support website of
the manufacturer of the computer to download and install any available
Windows XP compatible drivers, such as video adapter and audio drivers.

*All Courtesy of Nicholas

 

[purplehaz]

The xp cd is bootable. Just boot to it and follow the onscreen instructions
to partition, format, and install xp. Once xp is installed and running on
the one drive, use xp's disk management tool to format the second drive.
Note: you may need to go into the bios and set the first boot device to
cdrom.

 

[Will Denny]

Hi

The following article by MVP Michael Stevens will take you through the steps of a 'clean' install of XP:

"Clean Install Windows XP"
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html