I want to reformat a hard drive and don't know how.

[Emillereid]

My daughter's PC has become so loaded down with viruses, adware, spyware and whatever that is has slowed to a crawl. I tried reloading windows XP but that didn't improve a thing. There's nothing on the computer that can't be replaced so I'd like to just re-format (erase) the hard drive and start again. I've done it on a Mac, but that was real easy -- the Mac OS 10 disk has a utility that you click to re-format and then you install from the same disk. But I can't find such a feature on the XP disk and I looked around the setup stuff at the beginning of the PC turning on and I couldn't find it there either.

Could someone tell me how to re-format a PC in simplified steps? (The PC is a pentium III btw)

[Emillereid]

1. HELP!

[trotsky]

2. When you boot from the XP CD...

you want to Install (not Reinstall or Repair) a fresh copy of XP. There should be a point at which you can repartition the drive, or keep the same filesystem. That's where you want to repartition by deleting the existing and creating a new one. Then XP will format & install on the fresh partition.

[Emillereid]

3. Thanks -- I'll try that.

How do I boot from the XP cd on a PC?

[Princess Turandot]

4. You can do it a few ways..method 2 is probably the easiest..

Method One:

If your computer has a floppy disk drive (not all do these days) you can create a start-up diskette onto a floppy. Computers are generally set to use a floppy diskette as the first boot item if there is one in the drive. To do that, use the following steps from the XP help screen:

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To create an MS-DOS startup disk:

The MS-DOS startup disk you create will allow you to boot into MS-DOS.

Insert a floppy disk into your computer's floppy drive.

Open My Computer, and then click the floppy disk drive to select it.

On the File menu, point to the name of the floppy drive, and then click Format.

Under Format options, click Create an MS-DOS startup disk.
Click Start.

(Creating an MS-DOS startup disk erases all information on the floppy disk.)


Restart the PC with the floppy in the drive and the XP cdr in the cdr tray. That may allow you to choose the XP cdr as the start-up disk, but I wouldn't swear to that. If it does not, at the command prompt of A:, type 'C:' (no quotes)

That will send you to the C drive. Then type 'fdisk', which will wipe out everything on the hard drive and give you various formatting options such as setting up partitions.

Once the drive is formatted, eject the floppy and restart the PC with the Windows CD in the tray. It will launch the install routine at that point.

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Method 2:

Put the XP cdr in the disk drive, then restart the PC..as the machine starts up, and you first see something on the screen, press the F12 key. That should give you a one-time ability to boot from the cdr. For example, I have Dells, and as soon as I see the Dell logo on the screen, I hit F12. If you don't hit F12 fast enough, let the machine finish loading Windows and restart it, trying to hit F12 faster.

You should see several start-up options. Use the up and down arrows to go to 'start up from CDR' and the follow the XP instructions. You don't want to do a repair I gather, so do not pick that option.

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Method 3:

If the above doesn't work for some reason, you will need to get to your BIOS system screen to set the PC to start-up with the CDR. On my computers, pressing the F2 key as soon as the PC shows the DELL logo takes me to the BIOS menu where there is an option to set-up the CDR as the first start-up device. The benefit of the first 2 methods I described is that they are one time things; if you change your BIOS, you will need to go back to change the boot order when you are finished.

HTH,
PT

[Emillereid]

5. Thanks so much. I'll try and let you know what works.

[LTR]

6. Reformatting hard drive

Restart in DOS mode (while it's restarting, hold down the 'F5' key. Type in "format c:" (without quotes). This will start the reformatting process, and completely wipe out your hard drive. Remember to back up anything you deem important.

When it's all done, just load the XP installation CD. Be sure to have the registration number handy. This will create virtually a like-new system, sans viruses, spyware, etc.