Formatting hard disk

[lestonian]

Hi all,

I'm using XP Home. I want to format my hard drive and reinstall Windows XP.

I've made a XP boot disk but when I boot from it, there are no commands (like format) that I can use. Plus it doesn't recognize the hard disk as a valid drive ('Invalid drive specification' message when I type C: at the command prompt).

I used to do this with previous versions of Windows but obviously XP is different.

Can anyone tell me how to boot so that I can format my C: drive?

Thanks in advance.

[Robotix]

Hi

Try going into dos and typing fdisk.
Using delete your c partition.
Then recreate it.
Go into your computers BIOS and set boot from cd.
Put the windows xp cd in and exit and save your bios changes.

The system should reboot and boot from the cd. This will allow you to format and reinstall the harddrive.

Hope this helps. Works for me.

[lestonian]

Thanks Robotix for the guidance.

One thing that I'm wondering - What happens if you go into DOS and do fdisk while WinXP is running? Seems like opening a DOS shell from within WinXP and doing fdisk would cause problems. Is there a way to "Restart in MS-DOS mode" like there is in Win98?

Or maybe I'm assuming it will cause a problem, but it really won't...?

TIA

[Robotix]

You can get a windows xp boot disk from the net if you want and boot from that and get to dos that way. Then just follow what i said before.

[dws8344]

I don't see an option to delete "c" in fdisk
help please
thanks

[Robotix]

Hi Again

To delete C: using Fdisk do the following :-

Run Fdisk
Choose Option 3. Delete Partition Or Logical Drive
On the next screen choose on of the following options :-
1. Delete Primary Dos Partition
Or
4. Delete Non-DOS Partition

Read All Text That Comes Up On The Screen

If you don't feel too confident as what to do then run Fdisk and choose option 4 and send me a copy of what comes up on the screen and i will give you a detailed set of instructions

[W8 4 Me]

you'll probably have to delete any extended dos partitions (D:, E: F:, etc) before you can delete C: with fdisk. If you have any info you need to keep on other drives, I'd suggest not using fdisk

[lestonian]

I've found out that this is actually pretty simple to do, but it is definitely a different approach from previous versions of Windows, i.e. Win98.

What you have to do is boot from the WindowsXP Setup CD, and let it run Setup. Tell it you want to install a clean copy of Windows. Early on in the process you get the option of choosing the partition you want to install the operation system to. At this point you can delete and create partitions, and formatting them at that time.

So it's pretty simple, but different from Win98.