formatting

[David Smyth]

i am wanting to totally format my hardrive on my laptop to get rid of all
the rubbish ive collected but whenever i even install a new windows system
the old files are still on the computer anyone tell me how to format the
drive to get rid of everthing

 

[Anando [MS-MVP]]

Hi David,

You can perform a clean install of Windows XP. More expert advice can be
found here:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp

Performing a clean install of Windows XP
http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/expertzone/columns/honeycutt/02october07.asp

--

Anando
Microsoft MVP- Windows Shell/User
http://www.microsoft.com/mvp
http://www.mvps.org

Folder customizations
http://newdelhi.sancharnet.in/minku

Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[joe]

Best way to do this is to create a boot disk with fdisk
and format on it

you can get a program that will do this for you at
http://www.cybertechhelp.com/html/downloads/download.php/i
d/32

then boot up the disk to dos prompt
then type "fdisk"
anything saying about large disk support say yes

select option 3 (I think) to delete the partion's
note: if your drive is in NTFS format then it is classed
as a non-Dos partion

once all partion are deleted create whatever number of
partion's you wish to create and set them as dos partion's

then set an active partion

exit fdisk and restart your comp and bring it back to dos
with the boot disk

then type "format c:" this will format the c: drive in
Fat32 (don't worry if you wany NTFS format for an XP
system this can be changed on install)

now boot your O/S and install on to drive c:\
and follow the on screen instrutions.

All rubbish will be gone