Formatting Hard Drive using Win XP

[blakemckenna]

How can re-format my HD using Windows XP?

Thanks,
Blake

[whothis]

Doesnt xp support ...format c: ...?

[blakemckenna]

If it does, I can't find it anywhere...

[dglienna]

boot to the CD. when you start the install, doesn't it ask you if you want to format the drive in FAT or NTFS? Seems to me that I saw something like that a few weeks ago.

Other option is to create a boot disk, boot to it, and then execute the format command. I had a ME boot disk, and it worked fine. FDISK will wipe out a partition, but you still need to format it.

[Ideas Man]

If you wanna wipe your disk, boot off the Windows XP CD, when you get to the partition screen, delete all the partitions, create them how you want them and format them as NTFS. Don't use FDISK uless you really must, the utility in the XP setup is much better and allows you to format w/ NTFS, the format command only formats as FAT32.

[dglienna]

we only had an XP upgrade disk, so we had to load 98 first. Talk about a p.i.t.a. Should have spent the extra $100 two years ago, but the client cared too much about cost, and lost out in the end.

[Ideas Man]

It should ask you during setup to insert a qualifying full previous version of Windows, you simply insert the 98 CD, it does its check, then continues. You don't need 98 installed at all.

[dglienna]

i didn't see that anywhere, but i didn't think that it was possible.
XP was trashed, and we wanted to wipe it out and start over.
I thought that the drive had best be wiped before trying the new install.
i don't think that we could have booted to the upgrade disk. What is the sequence that you would have used? (for next time)

[Ideas Man]

I've actually never tried it, but in the ME days, during installation, it prompted you for a full version qualifying media i.e. the full version of Windows 98, it checked the CD, then asked you to put the ME CD in again and off it went.

Todo it, I'd say you do it like any other installation of Windows XP, Boot off the Windows XP CD, delete all the parititions and create them again (like FDISK, but easier and better) then format as NTFS, during setup it should prompt you to insert the full version of a previous version of Windows, either 98, ME or 2000 would do I'd say, when it checks it, it will install. Don't need any old buggy 95/98/ME OS installed to upgrade from and it works like new .

[dglienna]

noted for future use

will have to try it with an upgrade disk