reformating w/o floppy drive

[NJDevil]

I head home from university to find an ATI X800 XT and another 512 mb of ram that I bought for hl2. I want to reformat (delete everything on my hard drive and re-install windows) but I don't have a floppy drive. How would I go about doing it w/o a floppy drive?

 

[Firus]

unless its Win 98 or older, just use the CD. (Win XP, 2000)

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: NJDevil
I head home from university to find an ATI X800 XT and another 512 mb of ram that I bought for hl2. I want to reformat (delete everything on my hard drive and re-install windows) but I don't have a floppy drive. How would I go about doing it w/o a floppy drive?

#1. Use a CD. Just make sure BIOS is set to boot off the CD-Rom before the hard drive and cross your fingers that the drive reads the disk.

#2 Buy a freakin $5 floppy drive or borrow one or something...even if it's just for the install and you don't even put it in the case.

 

[Farmer]

NJDevil:

Yeah, just use the Repair console on the XP CD:

http://www.cyberwalker.net/faq.../reformat-NTFS-XP.html

 

[WobbleWobble]

Just boot off the XP CD and you can do all your formatting/partitioning during the setup. The only catch is you may need to put drivers for your HDD controller card on the CD. There are instructions all over the net to do so.

2000 should be bootable too. If it's an older OS... let us know which one.

 

[Farmer]

That is not as complete a wipe as the Repair console reformat (as far as I know).