Format with Win XP Pro

[theyardie]

Hi, I'm currently using Win XP which was installed over Win 98. I think I have a virus as when I start the PC I get active desktop recovery then an error message which then tells me my Pc will now restart.
I can start in safe mode and I want to reformat for a fresh install of Windows 2000 home as you cant install over XP Pro...
I get to the recovery console and get as far as 'All non removable data blah blah...' Y to proceed with format and after a few seconds the WINNT prompt appears again... like a bad penny..
Am I doing something wrong as I seem to of tried most things this past week and its now driving me slightly mad... I tried to do the FDISK but it tells me I dont have a partition to delete...It is also NTFS not Fats...Help me please!!!

[overload]

Originally Posted by theyardie

Hi, I'm currently using Win XP which was installed over Win 98. I think I have a virus as when I start the PC I get active desktop recovery then an error message which then tells me my Pc will now restart.
I can start in safe mode and I want to reformat for a fresh install of Windows 2000 home as you cant install over XP Pro...
I get to the recovery console and get as far as 'All non removable data blah blah...' Y to proceed with format and after a few seconds the WINNT prompt appears again... like a bad penny..
Am I doing something wrong as I seem to of tried most things this past week and its now driving me slightly mad... I tried to do the FDISK but it tells me I dont have a partition to delete...It is also NTFS not Fats...Help me please!!!

If you really wan't a fresh install of Windows 2000, boot from the Windows 2000 CD. and at the setup it will ask you wether you wan't to format or not say yes and select the C: drive, or wherever it is you wan't to install it.

NOTE: A fresh install will erase any and all data in your drive. hence th name Fresh.

[Lambda_Core]

Originally Posted by theyardie

Hi, I'm currently using Win XP which was installed over Win 98. I think I have a virus as when I start the PC I get active desktop recovery then an error message which then tells me my Pc will now restart.
I can start in safe mode and I want to reformat for a fresh install of Windows 2000 home as you cant install over XP Pro...
I get to the recovery console and get as far as 'All non removable data blah blah...' Y to proceed with format and after a few seconds the WINNT prompt appears again... like a bad penny..
Am I doing something wrong as I seem to of tried most things this past week and its now driving me slightly mad... I tried to do the FDISK but it tells me I dont have a partition to delete...It is also NTFS not Fats...Help me please!!!

You could do the one above with win2000, there is also another method using win 98.

boot the stem with CD Rom support but don't go to setup.
then type cd Win98
and type format <c: or whatever drive>

PS there are better formatters out there, eg PowerMax from Maxtor, is one example. Powermax is a LOW LEVEL reformatter that actually goes around your hard drive deleting (rewriting with zeros) all the data. The microsoft ones just remove the file allocation tables (FAT's) so if the virus is bad, it might still survive with these formats.