Formatting question

memmerz

memmerz

memmerz

Associate
Joined
14 Dec 2008
Posts
19
Afternoon,

I basically cannot work out how to completely wipe my laptop, and install a fresh xp?

I booted to the xp disk, and did what I thought was a fresh install but all my documents / my programs are all still there and it is clear that this just reinstalled windows without wiping the hard disk.

What am I doing wrong? I tried to right click on my c drive and go format, but it says the drive is in use.

Maybe (and hopefully) I am being a retard and this is straightforward, but I cannot work it out!

Ta
 
boot the xp disk, and keep an eye out for the option to select a partition to install to. You should then be able to delete the existing partition, create a new one, and do a full format before the second stage of the install (the gui part where you get your mouse cursor back).

Just make sure you carefully read all the options available to you on each screen, I remember it being fairly straightforward.
 
You'll need to get a boot disk (CD ver unless you have a usb floppy drive available) and boot the laptop from that. Then you are not actually using the system drive to run from and you can format it. Most boot disks will have a format utility or at least a command prompt where you can run the dos level command from.
 
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