Reformat hard drive under XP? - Comments Page 5

Thank You! I just reformatted the HD on my PC, because it was slow/freezing up etc. Your instructions worked perfectly and now I have a shiny new copy of xp and have got rid of all the old rubbish.

I have reformatted my hard disk and tried to install xp home using installation CD. Copying of all files needed for setup was successful. When restarted, it won't reboot to start xp setup. I only get a blank screen. No visible activity on my hard disk. I have already tried a couple of times but to no avail. Please help.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Perhaps removing all partitions and reformatting will help. If not, I'd replace the hard drive.

Thanks Bob, I was dreading doing a reformat of my hard drive, your article took away a lot of the pain and anguish by putting it in easy to follow stages and plain English. Thanks.

listen when i start the formatting from my windows xp cd it goes to 100% then shows the hard drive damaged or cannot be formated. What do i do?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'd throw away the hard drive and install a new one.

I wanted to reinstall my hard drive on xp so i can start fresh on windows vista.But i have some files that i need to keep and i got an external hard disk.
recently the hard disk contained virus and i would like to reformat it so i can store data inside it.when i try to reformat it says the hard disk is used by something.i deleted and it still show free space 196gb overall 120gb.How to reformat the HDD.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like you're trying to do the reformat while Windows is running. You MUST boot from the setup CD.

when i get to 100% it too says my hard drive is damaged and cannot be formated, it tells me to check if its hooked up correctly too. Why would it say this? my hard drive was working fine yesterday...

So i reinstalled Windows XP by myself without looking at any of the tutorials online. Very stupid decision. I guess i forgot to reformat the drive or something because theres a new windows and everything runs fine but the hard drive still has all the programs from before. i cant run any of them and it takes up like 20GB of space...any suggestions on how i can delete all this useless junk without reinstalling windows again?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You must have installed Windows in a second partition, without removing the first. My guess is that Windows is running from your (virtual) D: drive now. You could use Windows Explorer to delete stuff in the C: drive, but if it was my system, I'd reformat the whole drive and do it again.

SIR... HOW CAN I FIX THE ERROR CODE 1032 IN MY HARD DISK? WHEN I REFORMAT MY HARD DISK IT DOES'NT FINISH REFORMATTING.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I could not find that error code listed in a Google search. My best guess is it indicates a hardware error.

Hi, I unpartitioneted my External Hard Drive by mistake. Know when I plug it it recognize the machine but the Icone doesn't appear? Could you please guide me to fix this problem. However, I have to let you know that I already format the C: Drive when this happened.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Some data may be lost, but TESTDISK may be able to recover the old partition.

Hello, Thanks for this helpful article!! I selected, deleted, created, chose (NTFS) "quick format" and reinstalled Windows XP just as you instructed. All went extremely smooth.
I am now wondering if I should have also included the small partition (31MB) that is FAT File System? The Disk Management program indicates the Status: Healthy (EISA config) and the partition where Windows is installed (37.21GB) NTFS Status: Healthy (System).

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'd leave it... 31MB is miniscule compared to 30+ Gigabytes.