Brick Wall: How to reformat hardisk running XP

[Mattlock2]

I need to reinstall XP on my system. Being a newbie I am not exactly sure how to go about reformating my HD. For some reason my system will not boot of the XP CD. I wanted to clean my hardrive and start fresh. Do I need to download an FDisk utility or something?

Mattlock

 

[Adul]

i was going tosay use th xp cd. Make sure you cdrom is set in biios to be booting before the HD. You can also try these bootdisk.com start up disks

 

[toadstool]

I use my Win98 "start-up" disk. It has all the utilities you need. I found that worked better than the Win XP format. For some reason Win Xp format program gave me errors when I tried to reinstall. I did this to me TWICE. So, it wasn't a fluke. When I tried the Win98 disk to format, I was able to reinstall Win XP with no problems.


If you don't have access to a win98 start up disk, you can go to "bootdisk.com" , as was mentioned in the post above mine.

 

[BFG10K]

Check the BIOS for the boot order and make sure the CDROM is selected first. After you boot off the XP CD you'll be able to manage your partitions.

Also, don't overclock your hardware when installing a new OS onto your system otherwise you might have problems later on.

 

[First]

Mattlock2, it's very simple, just follow these steps:

1. The moment your system starts booting up, press or hold the Delete botton until you see screen come up (usually blue) that gives you lots of options. If that doesn't work, try F2, some computers have different commands to enter the BIOS.

2. From there, try to find the options for "First Boot Device, Second Boot Device, etc.". Once you've scrolled down and highlighted the "First Boot Device" option, press enter and you should have options to boot from certain devices (like your Hard Drive, CDROM, etc.).

3. Set your "First Boot Device" to "CD-ROM". Stick your WinXP CD in the CDROM.

4. Exit the BIOS saving your changes.

5. Your system will reboot, and you should be asked to "Press any bottom to boot from CD..." Once you do that, you're set to install WinXP.

However, since you want to format your Hard Drive, you should see an option for deleting a partition on your hard drive. Once you find that option, choose to delete the partition on your hard drive. It'll ask you a couple more times if you really want to delete your partition, and you want to say yes. Once that's done, you can press enter and you should be fresh installing WinXP from there. Btw, choose "NTFS (Quick)".

 

[vetteguy]

The CD method is definitely the best, but with XP we have been given back the ability to make bootable disks, in case you absolutely can't use the CD.

 

[Mattlock2]

thanks everyone for the advice.

I already changed the boot sequence in the BIOS to CDRom first but it still will not boot from the CD. during the boot sequence you can tell it is trying to boot from CD but a screen flashes (split second) that says:

CD Rom boot: Failure (or something like that)

then it boots from HD as the 2nd sequence option.

Very frustrating

Mattlock

 

[Slogun]

Try making cd-rom the ONLY boot device. Once you reformat or start to install WinXP, you will have to chg BIOS back to booting from HD for the installation to complete.

By the way, I don't think you can boot from Win98 bootdiscs if your hard drive was formatted to NTFS. I believe that is a security feature designed to prevent unauthorized access to the data on the disc by someone who was otherwise unable to boot up a password protected machine.

 

[Slogun]

Alternatively, you can reformat the HD quickly by removing it and installing it as a slave on another NTFS machine (NT, Win2000, WinXP), if you have one. This might work on a Win98 machine if the HD is FAT32.

 

[Colt45]

IF your XP CD is bootlegged, and wasnt copied from an image it will not be bootable.


(not accusing you of anything, just throwing that option out there...)

Anyways, the win98 boot disk is a great tool for formatting and such.. too bad it doesnt support NTFS though.. ( really a non issue as you can convert to NTFS on windows install).

A good idea would be to put smartdrv.exe (obtainable from a win98 computer.. in uh.. system i think..) its available on some bootdisks and such. it will speed up the install if you have to boot to floppy.. (disk caching program.. speeds up transfers (well bursts anyways))