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format with windows xp!? boohoohoo

B

bumrushin

Junior Member
all i wanted to do was reformat my lone hdd on my system to get a clean start-i liked to do this occassionally back when i had win98. i have windows xp pro. i want to format my hdd - remove every single shred of information from it. i want to reinstall windows 98. i do not want anything to do with this xp rubish ever again. someone please help me here. ive tried everything that ive seen in forums and webpages etc..... my next option is to treat this windows xp like the scarlet fever and go out in my backyard and burn every piece of equipment that has come within 20 feet of it. help me!!!
 
I have XP pro at home ... it works great !! I don't what is your problem ? ... now I have Win2K and XP pro and 98(that I never use anymore) on the same PC .. all together ... XP is the fastest OS so far !!
I put XP home edition on my freinds Compaq and it sucked big time !!! shi@@y hardware and bad version of XP !!!
 
im just tired of the candy striped, user friendly, blue blue blue blue...ahh i cant take it and i want rid of it eh kapish. someone please let me know how i can accomplish this.
 
You can use the Classic window .. it will look like the older windows ..if you don't like the new interface
 
young fart, thanx, but no 98 startup disks here 🙁 mowsow, quit tryin to sell this darn os to me. i already bought it and dont want it!!! just let me digress in peace please!
 
ok im gonna try this, thanx for the info bud, but if it doesnt work...im gonna hunt you down and feed you aol 5.0 cd's until you poop emails!
 
I prefer http://www.bootdisk.com (easier to remember).
Simply formatting C: will not do - the XP MBR is still there.
If the C: drive is NTFS, a WinME start-up floppy should do the trick of wiping it off - I don't think Win98 floppy will (correct me if I'm wrong).
 
WinME wouldn't be able to read the NTFS either, but the format c: would reformat it as fat32. Also, I decided to link it up for him with the win9x boot disks, guess I was feeling generous 😉

bumrushin: if what YoungFart says about the winxp mbr being there, you will need to do a 'fdisk /mbr' at the command prompt as well, before you start to install windows.
 
Before you can format an NTFS partition with a Win ME/9x boot disk you have to delete it with fdisk.

Also, the command YoungFart is thinking of is fdisk /mbr not format, and isn't neccessary. There seems to be a misconception that Windows writes to the MBR .... it doesn't. Windows uses a standard MBR. Its boot info is kept in the first sectors of your drive, not in the MBR. However, if upon installation Windows finds there is a boot loader like Lilo or Grub, among others, in the MBR it will erase it and restore the MBR to its default state.
 
My bad - it should be fdisk /mbr.

However, KenCleanAirSystem you lost me there with the Windows install and MBR.
It is my understanding that fdisk writes to MBR if you make any changes. Likewise WinNT, 2K and XP install routines modify MBR. So does the NT/Win2K Disk Manager. Am I wrong?
Are you talking about Windows 9x or all windows?
 
As far as I know Windows doesn't actually write any data to the mbr. It will format the mbr when installing (without asking you if you want it to), which is why if you dual boot and have a boot loader written to the mbr you have to reinstall it if you reinstall Windows, but it doesn't actually write any data there.
 
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