Reformat hard drive under XP? - Comments Page 3

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.

This article was great - however, when I ran the format last night, everything seemed fine until it said it was missing a file and would never reboot. Some sort of sys32 file or something? Any ideas what's wrong?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Perhaps you have a bad CD and a file couldn't be copied?

Hello, Thanks for this helpful article So i reinstalled Windows XP by myself But it's not working, now i have this message

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \system32\hal.dll.

Please re-instal a copy of the above file."

But now i dont know what to do,or the next step. Can you please help me.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I suggest booting into the Recovery Console, and then running CHKDSK. If that doesn't work, try a repair install. See http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Hey, I'm trying to reformat a hard drive, when I attempt to delete the parition windows is on at the moment it tells me that it containts temporary setup files and the partition can not be deleted. DO you know how to get around this?

EDITOR'S NOTE: It sounds like you forgot to BOOT from the CDROM. You can't format the "active" drive while running Windows.

Hello Bob. I am reformatting using XP. I am adding new memory and a new AGP card due to hardware failure. I currently have a dual boot with ME and XP. From what I remember I could not get XP to format as NTFS due to the dual boot. I have backed up documents, picture files and music files. Here is my question: Will the format change from FAT 32 to NTFS affect my ability to use my backed up documents, picture files and music files?

EDITOR'S NOTE: I can't think of any reason why it would matter.

Have a Microtel computer with Windows XP. I am attempting to reformat following instructions to the letter. When it gets half way installing Windows XP it just freezes. It will not get beyond that point no matter how many times I try. Have been told it might be the mother board. Thanks!

EDITOR'S NOTE: It could also be a defective CDROM, or a damaged hard drive.

Hi Bob, Great site. I'm trying to reformat a laptop hard drive, but whenever I try to delete the partition on which Windows is installed, it won't let me, due to "Temporary Installation Files." I don't have enough HD space to currently install it on the drive. Now I can't get past the installation screen. Please help!

EDITOR'S NOTE: You forgot to boot from the CD, it seems.

I recently bought a Toshiba Laptop with Windows vista. Its perfromance has been very very slow ever since. I asked the store to dump vista and install XP for me and they would not do it. I have 1 gig of memory with 120 gig hard disk and quite a fat processor about 1.3 GHZ. What could I do to this machine to make it perform faster?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Very slow ever since... what? Since you bought it, or did something happen? More RAM is probably the best bang for the buck.

Hi Bob, Im having problems formating my laptop hard drive so as to reinstall winXP. Have tried to format using the steps above but get the following message- 'The disk may be damaged. Make sure the drive is switched on and properly connected to your computer. If the disk is a SCSI disk, make sure your SCSI devices are properly terminated.' Can you help?

EDITOR'S NOTE: At what point do you get this message? Are you sure you're booting from a CD?

Hi Bob, I'm trying to reformat a hard drive, when I attempt to delete the partition windows is on at the moment it tells me that it contains temporary setup files and the partition can not be deleted. I changed boot order in the BIOS with ATAPI CD-ROM Drive on top and then Hard Drive then Floppy Diskette Drive followed by Network Adaptor at the bottom and selected F10 to save and exit. DO you know how to get around this?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, you must boot from the CD. If you boot from the HD, you will get that error.

Bob, Great sight, and although it did not quite give me the answer I was looking for, it prompted the old grey matter to 'get it'. I was trying to install XP and reformat the drive, but kept getting the message about not being able to due to Setup files. Your site mentions not being able to format the drive XP is on and having not booted from the disk. Suddenly dawned on me that I was using a wireless keyboard and so it was possible that when I pressed 'any key' it was not registering and thus not booting from the disk. Plugged in a wired keyboard and presto. The key thing to notice if you think this might be your error, is that if you boot from the CD you have to click F8 to accept the license agreement and if you don't boot from the CD you click with your mouse to accept the licence agreement.