reformat

[Frederick Rogers]

My older computer (Dell Dimension 4300) with XP home. It is an upgrade from
ME. The only "Operating System" Disc I have is the ME disc. (I have the
upgrade CDRom to XP) . I need to reformat the hard drive before I give it
away but when I attempt to do it using the upgrade CD it tells me that the
XP I have is newer than the CD. What is s the most efficient way to reformat
the drive? Do I need to use the ME system disc to begin the process?
Thanks

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

My older computer (Dell Dimension 4300) with XP home. It is an upgrade from
ME. The only "Operating System" Disc I have is the ME disc. (I have the
upgrade CDRom to XP) . I need to reformat the hard drive before I give it
away but when I attempt to do it using the upgrade CD it tells me that the
XP I have is newer than the CD. What is s the most efficient way to reformat
the drive? Do I need to use the ME system disc to begin the process?
Thanks

Boot the machine with your WinXP CD and allow the disk
to be formatted when given the choice. You will, of course,
lose all data currently on the disk. During the installation
process you will be prompted for your WinME CD.

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

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:

NOTE: It would be best to physically disconnect all your peripheral hardware
devices, except the monitor, mouse and keyboard, before installing XP.

NOTE: If you have an internal Zip Drive installed, physically disconnect the
EIDE and power cable to it before proceeding, otherwise your main
hard drive may not be assigned the customary C: drive letter.
After installing Windows XP, you may then reconnect it.

1. Open your BIOS and set your "CD Drive as the first bootable device".

===> Accessing Motherboard BIOS
===> http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

2. Insert your Windows XP CD in the CD Drive and reboot your computer.
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 all 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. ==> Immediately after installing Windows XP, make sure XP's Firewall is enabled:
==> http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxpsp2/Default.mspx

7. After Windows XP is installed, visit the Windows Update website
and download the available "Critical Updates".

8. After installing the critical updates, 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.

9. If you happen to run into any installation difficulties, use the following resources:

How to Troubleshoot Windows XP Problems During Installation
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310064

Troubleshooting Windows XP Setup
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_setup.htm

[Courtesy of MS-MVP Kelly Theriot]

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------­----------------

:

| My older computer (Dell Dimension 4300) with XP home. It is an upgrade from
| ME. The only "Operating System" Disc I have is the ME disc. (I have the
| upgrade CDRom to XP) . I need to reformat the hard drive before I give it
| away but when I attempt to do it using the upgrade CD it tells me that the
| XP I have is newer than the CD. What is s the most efficient way to reformat
| the drive? Do I need to use the ME system disc to begin the process?
| Thanks

 

[Guest]

You should be able to reformat the hard drive by using the ME system disc,
the effect of this eventually should be to take the hard drive back to the
original ME installation.

You'll have to reconfigure your system before this at the start so that the
computer boots from that ME system disc, otherwise there is a possibility
that it won't acceot it, let me know if you need info on how to reconfigure
your system.

Peejayess

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Formatting the hard disk with the ME installation CD is both
unnecessary and undesirable, since the process cannot create
an NTFS partition (which is the native file system for WinXP).

 

[Guest]

I wasn't aware that the disc could be reformatted with just an upgrade disc,
besides the comment was that it had been tried and had failed and all that
was required was to format the hard drive. Given that, I did not consider it
to be either undesirable or unnecessary.

 

[LVTravel]

You need to consider, before you format the hard drive and return it to the
basic OS, whether you want to "give" the XP copy you have to someone else.
This point is moot if this is one of the "free" upgrades to XP (OEM) that
Dell gave out near the time XP was due to be released by Microsoft when
someone purchased a system with ME (mine was an 8100 model.) If you use the
XP OS you need to give the new owner the ME and XP disks with both license
keys.

If this was a retail purchase XP upgrade you may want to only use the ME for
the format and hold onto the XP upgrade.

If you are going to use XP, follow Carey's instructions.

If you are using the ME disk then you need to boot with the ME disk and then
exit out of the setup to the D: prompt or boot with an ME System recovery
disk (not a simple floppy boot disk). What you do next depends on whether
you converted the drive from FAT 32 to NTFS. If the drive is NTFS you need
to (from the DOS prompt) FDISK the drive, delete the non-DOS partition,
create a standard partition and then format with FAT 32 or if the drive is
still FAT 32 simply format the drive with the FORMAT C: command. Proceed
with the setup of ME from the CD.

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:

NOTE: It would be best to physically disconnect all your peripheral
hardware
devices, except the monitor, mouse and keyboard, before
installing XP.

NOTE: If you have an internal Zip Drive installed, physically disconnect
the
EIDE and power cable to it before proceeding, otherwise your
main
hard drive may not be assigned the customary C: drive letter.
After installing Windows XP, you may then reconnect it.

1. Open your BIOS and set your "CD Drive as the first bootable device".

===> Accessing Motherboard BIOS
===> http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

2. Insert your Windows XP CD in the CD Drive and reboot your computer.
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 all 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. ==> Immediately after installing Windows XP, make sure XP's Firewall
is enabled:
==>
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxpsp2/Default.mspx

7. After Windows XP is installed, visit the Windows Update website
and download the available "Critical Updates".

8. After installing the critical updates, 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.

9. If you happen to run into any installation difficulties, use the
following resources:

How to Troubleshoot Windows XP Problems During Installation
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310064

Troubleshooting Windows XP Setup
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_setup.htm

[Courtesy of MS-MVP Kelly Theriot]

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------­----------------

:

| My older computer (Dell Dimension 4300) with XP home. It is an upgrade
from
| ME. The only "Operating System" Disc I have is the ME disc. (I have the
| upgrade CDRom to XP) . I need to reformat the hard drive before I give
it
| away but when I attempt to do it using the upgrade CD it tells me that
the
| XP I have is newer than the CD. What is s the most efficient way to
reformat
| the drive? Do I need to use the ME system disc to begin the process?
| Thanks

 

[Ron Sommer]

The format did not occur because XP was trying to be installed, not because
the format failed.
The install failed because the XP disk was not an updated version of XP.