How do i format an XP machine?

[d1abolic]

How the hell? I can't do this when Windows is on because it says that the volume is still in use. And i don't know how to start the PC in DOS.

 

[Smolek]

Tap F8 when the bios appears and go into the command prompt

 

[d1abolic]

Hm? I thought i tried that... doesn't seem to work.

 

[Smolek]

Have you tried putting a bootdisk in? Doesnt have to be for xp, 98 would work as well.

 

[toant103]

you want to do a clean install?

Just boot of the cd, then windows is going to ask you what you want to do with the hard drive. Like partition, leave file system as it or convert,or quick format.

Make sure you go into BIOS and set booting priority to CDROM as your first choice

 

[Cerebus451]

Do you want to format for another OS or are you installing XP again? Both XP and Windows 2000 give you the option to reformat a partition for installing. In you want to install Win98 then you need a Win98 boot disk to boot from, then use the format command. If you want to install Linux, then just let the Linux install blast the XP partition(s) and format for Linux.

Or are you talking about formatting a non-system partition? If it is a non-system partition, then boot into safe mode, then you should be able to reformat.