Windows Xp Home Upgrade Version - NTFS - Format Hard Drive

[John Hilgers]

During a previous fresh install of Windows Xp home
upgrade, I changed my hard drive file system to NTFS.
I've since read that this makes it impossible for me to
format my hard drive, with any upgrade version of Windows
Xp. This appears to be true based on yesterday's attempt
to do so. My PC is hopelessly hosed. Can anyone tell me
which of the below options would work or give me better
options?

1) Buy a full version of Windows Xp Home. I gather this
would allow me to format and partition the hard drive. Is
there a price break to go from Windows Xp Home Upgrade to
Windows Xp Home Full?

2) Buy a new hard drive (you apparently can't go backwards
from NTFS) and use the old file system.

3) Format and repartition my hard drive with other
software and then do a fresh install of Windows Xp Home
upgrade. It's not clear to me that I'd be allowed to load
the operating system after doing this. Does fdisk work on
a NTFSed hard drive or would I need other software?

 

[purplehaz]

You heard wrong. A drive formatted in nfs can be formatted and used over and
over again. The file system does not matter. The upgrade version of xp will
format any drive no matter what file system it was previously formatted in.
An oem version of xp cannot do an upgrade install, only clean installs, I
think this is where you are confused. So to answer your questions:
1 - if you have a oem version of xp, you can't do an upgrade install, if you
have a retail version of xp then you can do an upgrade install or a clean
install. Both will partition and format during setup.
2 - you can go back to older file systems after a drive is formatted in
ntfs, so the question makes no sense.
3 - you can use fdisk, works fine, you would need to delete the non-dos
partitions and create new ones, then format and install xp.

The xp cd has all the tools you need to do this, just boot to it and follow
the instructions.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

During a previous fresh install of Windows Xp home
upgrade, I changed my hard drive file system to NTFS.
I've since read that this makes it impossible for me to
format my hard drive, with any upgrade version of Windows
Xp.

SOrry, you've read wrong. That's completely false.

This appears to be true based on yesterday's attempt
to do so. My PC is hopelessly hosed. Can anyone tell me
which of the below options would work or give me better
options?

Do none of the things below. Simply boot from your XP CD and
follow the prompts for a clean installation. It will reformat for
you as part of the process.