Reformatting hard drive using XP

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Guest

How do you reformat the hard drive using XP?? What do you
need to do before starting? What files need to be saved
for start up once reformatted??
 
Most computers will boot from a CD-ROM now, so you should
be able to just toss in the XP CD, shut down your system,
reboot, and choose "Boot from CD-ROM." If it will not
boot from the CD, check your boot options in your BIOS and
make sure that it is set to boot from the CD-ROM, then try
it again.

If this still does not work, create a boot floppy (Put a
blank floppy in your A: drive, go to My Computer, Right-
click on the A: drive, select "Format," check the box
for "Create an MS-DOS stratup disk," and then hit OK.
*this will erase anything on that floppy*

Use this to boot the system, and it should let you access
the CD. Again, your BIOS must be set to boot from the
floppy drive. If you have a really nice BIOS, it will let
you assign a boot order to all of your drives. :)

If all else fails, just toss in the CD while XP is
running. You can install XP on top of itself, which
basically refreshes the system files. This method will
preserve you documents, installed progs, etc, but is not
as clean as doing a fresh install from DOS.

Anyway, the formatting proceedure is pretty straight-
forward once you start the install process. Just choose
NTFS on a single partition and a normal format (as opposed
to the quick), and it's pretty much on autopilot after
that.

As for backing things up, all you have to back up is stuff
that you don't want to lose. :)
 
One of the easiest methods is to reboot your PC with the
Windows XP CD-ROM in your CD-ROM drive and have it load
from there. This requires making sure that you have your
CD-ROM drive set as the Primary Boot Device in your PC's
BIOS so that it will load before loading your HD. If all
is good, the CD will automatically start and provide you
with instructions on what to do to reinstall Windows XP,
including showing you your current HD(s) and give you the
option of formatting them.

Hope this helps. Ideally, if you've never done this before
then you should try and find someone that has that can show
you first hand. It's easier watching someone else go
through all the steps so you're not confused.

Mark
 
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