DESPERATE NEED OF HELP IN REFORMATTING HARD DRIVE

[AtHomeLegalConsu]

My computer is giving me some problems and I want to reformat the hard drive ... reasons are that programs are malfunctioning, the speed is exrtrmely slow, and there is a virus on one of the dll files.

I tried to do this with a floppy and booting from it, but when I typed in

c: format

I was given bad command or file name

so I tried

format c:\

and was give the same thing

Now I am lost ......

I am using WinXP Home Ed., have a 30 GB hard drive (not to sure who manufactures it, as far as I know its a Maxtor)


Any advice is greatly greatly appreciated.

[DanGrease]

Use the Windows XP CD and boot from it and use it to format your hard drive. Its easier than using a floppy disk. Just make sure the option of booting from a CD is set in the BIOS. It usually is already.

dan

[Tazzin]

Welcome to TechIMO!

Save any data you want to keep to a CD-R/W or DVD-R/W.
Restart system.
On POST .. press DEL (or whatever key to go into the BIOS)
Find in the BIOS the Boot Sequence.
Change First Boot Device to CDROM.
Change Second Boot Device to HDD-0.
Insert WinXP CD
Save Changes to BIOS (usually F9... Y.. <enter>)
System Reboots.
Should Boot from XP CD.
Delete all partitions when you get to that point.
Create new partitions.
Format partitions.
Install XP.

Not sure if the Upgrade XP Home CD boots but try.

[Jeordiewhite]

When installing windows it gives you the option to delete a partition and format a drive with XP. Dont worry about doing that with a floppy as it only formats as fat32, not nfts. NTFS would be prefered for windows xp for sure.
To answer your question of the above, it would need to be a windows 98 floppy or dos, like dos 6.22 to format, if you made a bootable disk with windows xp home edition, it doesn't do the same thing, especially not when formatting to ntfs as ntfs would be too big to fit on a floppy. It takes 5mb for its self.

[AtHomeLegalConsu]

Tazzin

Thanks for that ... will that also erase the entire contents of the drive as well though?

[AtHomeLegalConsu]

Jeordiewhite: I was using a FAT32 system ...... I thought that NTFS was bad for WinXP because you lose things like encryption and password stuff ... is it actually better?

[DanGrease]

Yes it will erase the entire hard drive.
NTFS all the way for Windows XP.

dan

[AtHomeLegalConsu]

And do I really even need to partition the hard drive ...... what advantage(s) (if any) is there for it?

[AtHomeLegalConsu]

Thanks Dan, and to the 3 of you that helped here ..... I'm going to go try it now, and let you know in a half hour or so (whenever it finishes if it works) .... but really thanks a lot for that advice

[DanGrease]

You dont need to, you can use the entire hard drive if that is what you want. I would prefer that if youre not dual booting with a second OS. Also, you do not lose encryption or password stuff when using NTFS. Who told you that?

dan