Reformat hard drive under XP? - Comments Page 7

Hi, I successfully formatted my desktop following the steps provided. However, when I reinstall all the drivers from the CD that came with the computer, I couldn't install the ethernet LAN driver. When I search the hardware, it says that there's no ethernet Lan hardware. Do you know what went wrong?
my computer is an AMD Athlon 64 pro. K8T800 Neo
Ethernet hardware: Realtek 10/100/1000 mbps ethernet lan.
thanks.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'd look at the Realtek website for new driver software.

Hi Bob, My computer crashed - that wonderful blue screen - and I haven't been able to get back in. I am able to see the contents on my hard drive using a Linux CD and have saved (hopefully) everything I need to. When I boot from the installation CD, it only starts loading files, then goes back to the BSOD. No format, nothing else. Is it me or the CD?
Thanks!!

EDITOR'S NOTE: My guess is a problem on the hard drive. You'll probably need to replace it.

Hi Bob. My computer runs very slow at times. However, when I do a reboot it seems to work very well for a little while. Then it slows again. I have a DSL connnection and I usually don't turn off the modem when I do a reboot. Is my hard drive about to fail? My modem? Should I do a reformat? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

EDITOR'S NOTE: You can try rebooting your DSL modem once in a while. But this may help more: http://askbobrankin.com/make_windows_xp_run_faster.html

Hi Bob,
I have a C: and a D: drive that each had Windows XP on. The C: drive was somewhat corrupt so I tried to Reformat it which did seem to work but now I can not reboot the computer unless I want to re-install XP. What should I do????

EDITOR'S NOTE: It *seemed* to work, but you can't boot up normally? Sounds like the install process may not have completed. I suggest you wipe the disk with a reformat and then install XP.

Thank you. I was having some problems w/ reformatting, multiple partitions and multiple xp os's. Read numerous help pages but they were all wordy, techy, incomplete etc... You laid it out so that I could follow, understand and succeed. Many Thanks

Bob, I have taken an external HDD and placed it in my computer. I then formatted it and realised that only 31.49Gb are available out of the 300 that it stores...this is about the amount of free space I had on the HDD before I put it in my computer. I've tried putting the HDD back in the external case and it didn't work...now what?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like maybe the format didn't really happen. Does Explorer still show files on the drive? Oh, and maybe there are multiple partitions. Some vendors put a 32GB system partition on the drive and leave the rest for the user.

The format definitely happened, I did both a quick format and a full format through computer management. Explorer wouldnt show the files when I originally put it in, explorer told me to format, which I did. The original partitioning I did myself and it only had one NTFS partition that filled the whole drive. I'm going to try and format it using the XP boot disc with my other drives not plugged in. Also, do you think maybe making it Master (it is an IDE in slave mode, I have 2 other SATA drives, one being my XP drive) instead of slave will help and tell the BIOS to boot the SATA first (which I think it does automatically?)? Thanks for the quick reply, hope to hear back soon.

EDITOR'S NOTE: SATA does not have a Master/Slave model, so the IDE won't be seen as a Slave of any SATA drive. I would set it as a Master, so it will be seen by BIOS as the first in the IDE chain.

Awesome! thnx for the data, this has been the best and most accurate info I found, believe me, I searched in many other sites! THANX!!

I want to format my hard drive and reinstall XP. I boot up from Windows Xp CD and when I go to the format screen, it tells me to select the partition where Windows is installed. To format a new partition, I need to select the unpartitioned space and then press C to create a new partition. I want to allot the maximum amount of space available before formatting, can you tell me how to do that please?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You don't want another partition... you want to format the one you already have.

I had a previous friend work on my computer. He was to reformat hard drive and reinstall Windows XP from my original CD that came with computer. Untill recently I found out he installed a newer bootleg version of XP. Needless to say I can not access any Windows updates. Can I fix this with my original CD or do I have to reformat and reinstall XP?

EDITOR'S NOTE: You don't need to reformat again. Check this page for details on how to validate your bootleg copy of XP: http://radified.com/blog/archives/000306.html