Does anyone know a way of reformatting XP without a CD or floppy? [Resolved]

[Tom_Sample_UK]

Do you konw how to reformat XP without a CD or floppy?

[Electroman]

I've deleted all the off topic & irisponsible replies and restored the title.

BTW in reply to your question its not possible because after formatting a PC you need the CD to install XP from again.


However there are ways that companies will sometimes use to install things over networks but I can doubt that is the case .

[Tom_Sample_UK]

Thanks!

[StevenHickerson]

Hmmm if you make an exact copy of the xp cd to a slave harddrive and install from the slave harddrive I see no reason to need a cd. I've done this before on Windows 98 and ME dont think xp has anything special to prevent this from being done. But the problem here is I'm guessing your wanting to reformat and dont have a cd therefore you couldn't make a copy of it to a slave drive

[RobDog888]

In reply to Electro's comment on network installation, you will still need a floppy to boot from to install
the basic network card drivers so the system can connect to the shared network folder that contains
the XP CD image or shared CDROM of another system with the XP CD in it.

As for the slave drive suggestion, I think you would need to set the slave drive as the active partition
so when you blow away your current C drive you can boot to your "CD" image on the slave HD. If the
slave is on the secondary controller I dont think that you can make the partition active?