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This is off topic, but I have to wipe my hard drive clean today. Can I use a cd as in effect a "boot cd" so that when my computer is restarted it boots the program off the cd and then formats the computer . I have a laptop so I am having trouble getting over not being able to boot from a floppy. Any help would be highly apreciated. Also can I boot my cd to dos on a laptop running xp ? If so how ?
Download a windows 98 bootdisk.
Most of them have "FDISK" and format capabilities on them.
You'll then have to download "Nero" to burn a bootable CD-Rom.
Just burn the windows 98 bootdisk to the cd using Nero.
Wipe you drive then restart machine with boot disk still in drive, then just navigate to "D:\I386\winnt.exe" to reinstall.
If you want to install 2k/xp/later
you can just boot off the OS CD.... you might need to change the boot order in ur BIOS. (Varies quite a bit, if you need help we need more detailed computer information)
EDIT: Yes, you can format from 2k/xp installer
To boot a CD you need a bootable image.
Just putting what you would on a hard drive won't work. You can, however, burn a bootable floppy IMAGE to the CD. It will then have a bootable filesystem.
Otherwise you're gonna have to look into making a true bootable CD image.
You may even be able to put cd-rom drivers to read the rest of the data on the CDFS.
Like <ABX said, if you are gonna install Windows 2000 or XP after the format, use the utility located in the setup to do that and forget about FDISK, much easier and quicker and more efficient.
Quote:
if you are gonna install Windows 2000 or XP after the format, use the utility located in the setup to do that
Thats assuming the W2K or Win XP disk is bootable!
Might be a burnt copy?
On most computers you can keep tapping away at del, or backspace (forget which) and it will take you to a screen where you can configure what order of devices the computer trys to boot from. Just make it try to boot from the CD before the hard drive.
Hope that helps:thumb:
Its the ESC key on my machines!
Or F2