need help formatting pc

[Enkiadu]

I have a dell system running windows vista business and i didn't register in time so it basically shut down my entire computer(which is bullshit) anyway. i am basically saying fuck vista and I wanted to do a fresh install of windows xp. Now i have formatted computers many times and never seen this error. after restarting my computer and booting from the windows xp cd and after the first initial file check it says starting windows. it pauses there for about 20 seconds then goes to the blue screen of death! it gives me a stop error.(this is happening before any install takes place and before i have a chance to format the drive) i believe the error code is 0x000007b(aprox number of zeroes) and it says if i continue i could damage my hard drive etc etc. i have tried multiple windows xp discs and multiple tries each. please help!

the computer is a dell xps 410. sata hard drive, pci express video card, intel core 2 duo. if you need more info please let me know

 

[ojai00]

If you won't need anything on the hard drive, you can try running DISKPART. Here's a tutorial on how to modify your partition to dual boot XP and Vista but I'm sure you can use the DISKPART command to remove a volume and try to reinstall XP.

 

[Brazen]

you could boot to a Parted Magic liveCD and delete the partitions that way. Then see if you can reinstall XP. If you really want to clean the drive, boot the Parted Magic cd, open a terminal and run "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda" or change "hda" to "sda" if you have scsi or sata disk. That wipes out the mbr, the partition table, everything.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Yeah, the safest bet there is to kill the old partition and start fresh before raising the XP installation sequence.

 

[Enkiadu]

For anyone else experiencing this problem it turns out i had to change the raid settings in the bios from "raid on" to "raid autodetect" and xp booted right up.