Reformat hard drive under XP? - Comments Page 9

Hi Bob, trying to reformat my xp hard drive - I have 114GB hard drive as follows: C: 18.6GB, D: 93.1 . I have done win setup, enter, F8, MS validation but instead of Partitioned data it says no disk present. when i press any key to exit it brings up error message and tells me to restart in safe mode.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Alison, are you booting your computer with the Setup CD? When you boot normally, does it detect the hard drive? If not, the drive may be damaged.

Hi Bob, Yes I am using the Set up Cd received with my computer. When booting normally everything is there.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Do you get the prompt asking if you want to repair? Make sure to press ESC at that point.

You didn't mention drivers at all, which I find slightly irresponsible of you in the respect that most of your readers are looking for complete advice and have medium or low computer knowledge. You only covered 3 of the four steps: backup; un/install windows; install drivers; and reinstall virus protection, other programs, and documents. Since most drivers aren't found on the installation CD, someone might be left in limbo because they can't access the internet due to their freshly deleted modem drivers, and therefore can't even ask you for help in their plight.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Good point, although if you have fairly standard hardware, the Windows install disk will have all/most of the drivers you need. But I agree it's a good idea to mention this point in the article.

There is another option to get a clean system again without the need to re-install all your software, drivers and patches. When Fred Langa was still working for InformationWeek he made a very interesting article about an hidden repair option from the Windows XP boot CD. The best part? No need for the "arcane magic" from the disc's Recovery Console!

The user only needs to be able to follow the instructions to do an almost complete re-install from the (non-OEM!) boot CD. There is nothing more to it. YMMV, but I have personally tried this method three times on PC's from three different friends.

Likely not allowed, but for the moderator's reading pleasure, the link to the article:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189400897

EDITOR'S NOTE: Fred Langa is a smart guy with good advice. The option to re-install XP over your existing copy is fine for some people, but it will not remove viruses or spyware that may be lurking. And that's the reason why many people want to reformat.

major problem here. i have followed directions to the t. when reformat is done is says "if you have "somthing " in drive a then take it out and comp will restart. i have nothing in drive a but i took out cd and it restarts but it comes up saying disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter. i do that and it starts from scratch for reformating. im sure its a simple fix but ive got no clue what im doing wrong. win xp home edit. includes service pack 2 is the cd im using. thx for any help.

how do we delete windows with a virus on a computer

EDITOR'S NOTE: Better to just remove the virus... see http://askbobrankin.com/should_i_buy_antispyware_or_antivirus_software.html

Everything works fine until I want to delete existing partiton- intaller says it can't be deleted because there're temporal installation files which are needed for the installation.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like you forgot to boot from the CD...

After I did the reformat, when it restarted, I didn't push anything so it would do the last part of the installation. However, it just says installing windows but it won't do anything. It says setup will complete in approximately 39 minutes, but no time ever passes.Then 20 minutes later a fatal error will show up saying that an error has been encountered that prevents setup from continuing, it had a problem registering initpki.dll

EDITOR'S NOTE: My guess would be a bad spot on the Windows Setup CD. You can try cleaning it, but you may need to beg/borrow/buy a replacement CD.

Hi, Great info site but must admit to information overload. I don't know which way to go. I have a 6yr old pc running XP with 2 80GB HDD. My main drive(C)which has my operating system is nearly full and is starting to hang every 5 mins or so and locks the whole system up for about a minute at a time.. I have never ever done a back up of any description.

With trying to do the back up of 6yrs of family photos and documents and files etc I assume that the best way of doing this is getting an external HDD?

I would also like to add a much bigger HDD (500GB)and just use the two lesser drives for other things, but I will have to reformatt the old drive and setup XP on the new HDD. Is this an easy task to perform or should I just pay the experts to do it for me. They do want a lot of $ to do it something which I'm sort of lacking at the moment.

EDITOR'S NOTE: John, you could do a full image backup of your C: drive to the D: drive, with something like Acronis. Then restore the backup to the new drive. But you'd have the same 6 years of crud dumped onto a shiny new drive. Better to install XP fresh to the new drive, keeping the older drive(s) as slave drives. Then you can copy anything you need from them to the new drive, before retiring them.

I followed the reinstall, which I have done many times in the last 20+years. But every time I try to do a windows format and install on my old hard drive it says it can not detect my hard drive and I should exit the install.

I have taken out the disc and reboot the computer and started windows and everything works fine and disk has been scanned without finding an error. Even used a diag utility to checking the drive with no problems found.

I tried doing the repair windows option also to see how it would come up but it doesnt notice my hard drive either. It is a normal Sata drive and should not require any drivers.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The problem is likely that the install CD does not have the SATA drivers. Here is a link that should help: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml