how to reformat hard drive after windows XP installed??

[PrineFan]

i installed windows XP and my zip drive is C and hard drive is F-- found out i should have installed XP with the zip drive not connected.

anyone know the steps to take to format the hard drive (thereby erasing everything) and re-installing XP? this is a new build so i don't mind losing what i have on the hard drive, since all i have on it is windows anyway.

 

[MasterHoss]

I have the old Zip 100 (parallel) and installed XP Pro (clean install) 2 times without problems.

Anyway, just boot from your XP CD..do it the lazy way. Just delete and create the partition and reformat using the WinXP installation.

 

[PrineFan]

thanks so much for the reply..but... let me try to understand...

you say i should boot from the drive with the XP disc (that would be my cd-rom)....

then you said i should "delete and create my partition"--- ah, what does that mean??

sorry i'm so naive here. anyone explain this?

specifically..how do i delete a partition? and how do i create one? and then what?

 

[tm37]

I think all you would need to do is
1. Boot with CD rom support.
2. Run fdisk
3. delete primary partion.

Now I have never reversed a XP install as I just installed it about a week ago!

 

[Byte]

why don't you just change the drive letters? go to admin tools, computer managment, and disk managment, you can change all the drive letters.

 

[PrineFan]

the letter of the drive that the operating system is on cannot be changed--

i'm grasping at straws here... all dead ends.... not happy with bill gates

 

[jar5tyle]

<<

then you said i should "delete and create my partition"--- ah, what does that mean??


specifically..how do i delete a partition? and how do i create one? and then what? >>



If you have an XP boot CD, when it loads up it displays your HD's and partitions. It gives the commands right there, on how to delete and create partitions. It asks for which partition you want to install on.