How do I wipe my hard drive's with Windows XP if I don't have the XP CD?

[MaDfLaMe37]

How would I go about erasing my hard drive's completely? I'm running Windows XP Home Edition, but I don't have the CD for XP because this is a VAIO and it didn't come with an XP CD.

 

[dkozloski]

If you don't have the CD, how did XP get on there? If the machine came with XP installed it came with a set of rebuild discs with the operating system and drivers. Use them.

 

[oldfart]

Killdisk

 

[corkyg]

Some things don't make a lot of sense. If you use Killdisk, then what? You have a totally useless system until you have the capability to install the OS from scratch. It's hard to believe that Sony does not provide a Restore CD. ??? Sony Vaios work very well as issued.

Some systems come with the backup/restore software stored on the HDD. If you kill the disk, you kill that also.

 

[dinde]

you could also make a dos startup disk, then format from there. i dont know anything about laptops, but before you do this you should set your cd-rom as the first or second bootup device (so that later when u wanna install an os and put it in the cdrom drive it will boot automatically to it)

 

[oldfart]

Originally posted by: corky-g
Some things don't make a lot of sense. If you use Killdisk, then what? You have a totally useless system until you have the capability to install the OS from scratch. It's hard to believe that Sony does not provide a Restore CD. ??? Sony Vaios work very well as issued.

Some systems come with the backup/restore software stored on the HDD. If you kill the disk, you kill that also.

His question was:

How would I go about erasing my hard drive's completely?

That is exactly what Killdisk does.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: corky-g
Some things don't make a lot of sense. If you use Killdisk, then what? You have a totally useless system until you have the capability to install the OS from scratch. It's hard to believe that Sony does not provide a Restore CD. ??? Sony Vaios work very well as issued.

Some systems come with the backup/restore software stored on the HDD. If you kill the disk, you kill that also.

Sony's do come with restore disks... my uncle has a desktop, and my aunt has a laptop... both came with restore disks. Something smells fishy.:disgust:

 

[wfbberzerker]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

Originally posted by: corky-g
Some things don't make a lot of sense. If you use Killdisk, then what? You have a totally useless system until you have the capability to install the OS from scratch. It's hard to believe that Sony does not provide a Restore CD. ??? Sony Vaios work very well as issued.

Some systems come with the backup/restore software stored on the HDD. If you kill the disk, you kill that also.

Sony's do come with restore disks... my uncle has a desktop, and my aunt has a laptop... both came with restore disks. Something smells fishy.:disgust:

oh, i was eating a tuna melt, sorry.

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: MaDfLaMe37
How would I go about erasing my hard drive's completely? I'm running Windows XP Home Edition, but I don't have the CD for XP because this is a VAIO and it didn't come with an XP CD.

go to bootdisk.com and download a any microsoft OS boot... then format away.

 

[techs]

Some restore disks will not give you the option to re-format the drive if it sees the drive is already formatted. Any MS boot disk can be used to delete the partition. Then the restore disk will be forced to reformat. I have seen some that will not reformat after you delete partition if so go to bootdisk.com and get the boot disks for winxp and create and format the partition yourself.

 

[dkozloski]

The only CD that a Sony Vaio laptop will boot to is the rebuild disk because of the fiddled Sony BIOS. If you are going to install an operating system from scratch you are going to have to boot from a floppy.

 

[MaDfLaMe37]

thanks for the info guys!