I'm new to computers, how do you format?

[Pikkon]

I am wanting to reformat my hard drive a friend of mine told me I needed to because of some problems I'm having. So my question is how do you reformat a hard drive? I think you need the CD to reformat the hard drive is this correct? I left my CD at home when I left to college so I can always have it mailed to me but I kind of wanted to fix the problem sooner.

I am running windows xp pro can I reformat my hard drive by using the windows 98 boot disk, if so how do I do this? If you need the cd is there any software instead that I can use to reformat my harddrive so I don't have to wait for my cd to be mailed to me?

Oh finally, the cd i'm having mailed back to me is the XP Pro Upgrade, can this be installed on a formatted hard drive? If so since its an upgrade will it just ask sometime during the installation for an older windows cd, and if it does ask for this will windows 95 cd work?

 

[Smilin]

"I'm new to guns, how to you take the safety off?"

If you are wanting to reload your OS from scratch, you can boot with the XP CD and do a format during the course of setup. There are no extra steps required. If it's an upgrade CD it will prompt for a CD containing the previous OS. Windows 95 will not due - it's too many versions behind to count towards an upgrade.

Question:
How did you get the OS on to begin with if it's an upgrade version and you only have win95 available?
What is the actual problem you are having? Please include system specs etc..

 

[Pikkon]

Originally posted by: Smilin
"I'm new to guns, how to you take the safety off?"

If you are wanting to reload your OS from scratch, you can boot with the XP CD and do a format during the course of setup. There are no extra steps required. If it's an upgrade CD it will prompt for a CD containing the previous OS. Windows 95 will not due - it's too many versions behind to count towards an upgrade.

Question:
How did you get the OS on to begin with if it's an upgrade version and you only have win95 available?
What is the actual problem you are having? Please include system specs etc..

I had win98 previously, I just lost the disk and am banging my self in the head now for that one. The actual problem with my computer is that the internet was going extremly slow on the internet, for example I am on cable modem but was downloading slower then a 56k modem, however my other computer on the network is downloading great.

system specs:
athlon 1.33ghz, 256 meg ddr 2100, geforce 2 gts, epox 8kha+, netgear nic card

Oh and on the motherboard the digital display on it has the letters "FF" i looked in the instruction manual but only saw something for "FFh" is this the same thing, that "h" is there so I wouldn't think it is the same thing.

 

[KillaKilla]

If posible borrow an XP Full install CD from a friend, then use your upgrade license key. Upgrades, IME, have always lead to system instability. As I always say, give microsoft as few chances as posible to fvck itself up, as it will take every oportunity. Also, a Win98 bootdisk will only let you format as FAT32 (File Alocation Table 32-bit), and Windows XP, NT4.0. and 2000 have NTFS (New Technology File System) as their native state, and are more stable and just better in general when installed on an NTFS partition.

 

[oog]

Originally posted by: Pikkon

Originally posted by: Smilin
"I'm new to guns, how to you take the safety off?"

If you are wanting to reload your OS from scratch, you can boot with the XP CD and do a format during the course of setup. There are no extra steps required. If it's an upgrade CD it will prompt for a CD containing the previous OS. Windows 95 will not due - it's too many versions behind to count towards an upgrade.

Question:
How did you get the OS on to begin with if it's an upgrade version and you only have win95 available?
What is the actual problem you are having? Please include system specs etc..

I had win98 previously, I just lost the disk and am banging my self in the head now for that one. The actual problem with my computer is that the internet was going extremly slow on the internet, for example I am on cable modem but was downloading slower then a 56k modem, however my other computer on the network is downloading great.

system specs:
athlon 1.33ghz, 256 meg ddr 2100, geforce 2 gts, epox 8kha+, netgear nic card

Oh and on the motherboard the digital display on it has the letters "FF" i looked in the instruction manual but only saw something for "FFh" is this the same thing, that "h" is there so I wouldn't think it is the same thing.

The FF code means that the motherboard successfully completed the whole process of starting up (including things like checking the RAM, etc).