Reformat hard drive under XP? - Comments Page 5

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

I recently received a Trojan/Spyware/Worm/ect. riddled computer from my aunt, earlier you mentioned to lane that it is better to just remove the virus but seeing as this hard drive was stuffed by my aunt i would still need to reformat it. First of all it is a Compaq running windows XP. It has to hard drives the master being the Trojan laden and stuffed while the slave is empty. I do not have any of the original disks but do have my own copy of XP which i plan to use. What is the easiest way to reformat the master drive and re-install XP on to the current master?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Did you read the instructions in the article here?? I'd still caution you that malware removal may be a lot simpler, for all the reasons listed in the article.

I finished following the directions above and am now at the Set Up page again. I have 3 partitions and the largest that used to be the C: drive is now the D: drive. Is the D drive what I select to reinstall windows?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Generally the system is installed on the C: drive. Are you saying you don't have a C: drive? That would be very odd...

Ok.. here is my prob... I have an older(6 or older) HP PC it starts up fine. .. But when you go to try to update anything(mozilla-IE6-Safari-WoW...etc) you no longer can view the internet but it says your fully connected to the internet... So will reformating the drive fix my prob and also.. no true restore disc came with this pc.. they made it on a partition of the hard drive.. which I have made a back up disc of... will this allow me to totally wipe my drive and restore it back to factory (i kinda only want windows and drivers on the pc...)??? Any help will be appreciated!! :)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Reformatting the drive and re-installing the operating system will cure ANY software problem. But in most cases, it's an extreme solution of last resort. Have you tried scanning for viruses and spyware?

If you can boot from the CD you made, it MAY act like a Windows Setup disk, but I'm not sure. Usually, there's an option at boot time to reload your system from the recovery partition.

I have Windows XP on my Compaq PC, Now somehow certain Spyware came into the PC through Internet even though I had the Cyberdefender running on the PC. Now, due to the spyware the computer got a problem of restarting on running the spyware scan and on opening ebay etc.

So, I decided to reformat the C drive and reinstall Windows XP from the CD and I did exactly as what is written in your article about formatting the hard drive but after choosing the NTFS format and pressing ENTER for Windows to Install on C Drive just a few seconds later a Blue screen appeared showing: A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

Page_Fault_In_Nonpaged_Area with the Technical Information: STOP: 0x00000050 (0xE95D5618, 0x00000000, 0x8081882C, 0x00000002)

I wonder why it showed that windows has been shut down because I had already formatted the C Drive containing the Windows XP and its reinstall was still in process.

Now, later I realized that my system was a FAT32. So, I again did the same procedure and converted it into FAT32 from NTFS but still the same screen appeared and I am unable to install the Windows XP any longer. The system's hardware is absolutely fine because I had started using it a fresh since 2 weeks back only, and it was doing wonderfully well before that spyware came in.

EDITOR'S NOTE: My guess would be faulty RAM memory. Try swapping out the RAM to see if that fixes the problem.

I recently formatted my drive (320GB Hitachi) and now my OS (XP) will not install. I do not have a single install disk, I have a dual disk that came with my computer (Power Spec) I have tried to install in every which-a-way with every jumper settings and ribbon settings (master/slave slave/master, stand alone etc...Nothing. When I try to install it'll go thru the steps but hangs/freezes up. Is there something im not doing?

I have the serial number for my original copy of XP, but I no longer have the original install discs. I do however have a different copy of XP that I got from a tech. So my question is, can I install Windows from this disc using my own serial number; and if so will Microsoft still read it as a legitimate copy.

EDITOR'S NOTE: My understanding is that the serial number is not bound to the CD. If you have an XP install CD, and a valid license/serial number, you should be good.

Your article was helpful because I reformat once in a blue moon and never remember how to do it. All of the similar tips and articles I read assume yoiu are infected with virus or spyware or the like. My problems are from old files from deleted programs or down loads that take up space but Ican't find to get rid of. (I find files but can't tell if they are used by a current application or not. I find it helpful sometimes just to back up specific items, wipe the drive

Read all the comments. This one not addressed. In reformatting XP, first blue screen, I pressed Enter. Then comes the message that no hard drives are found, press F3 to quit. In my Bios, on the Main tab there are no IDEs listed, in the Boot tab my IDE is listed. So I can start XP, and reboot, no prob. Just can't reformat. How can I get the Bios Main to see my harddrives. I have never had the CPU open, never bothered the connections.

I tried but when I chose "delete primary partition" It will not let me. So all it will let me do is re-install windows xp. I want a clear hard drive, but it wont let me....

EDITOR'S NOTE: Are you sure you booted from the Setup CD? Windows will not let you delete the partition that it was booted from. So if you booted up from the hard drive, that would explain the problem.

I reformatted my computer which I have done a thousand times on other computers exactly the way you directions said but when I started reformating it, the 'D' drive had all the space instead of the 'C'. The "C" drive for some reason said it had the system recovery on it which is usually on the 'D') and not enough space to put the operating system on it. So, I put it on the 'D' drive.
Everything is on the 'D" now and so far I only find a couple of problems that some programs can't access on the “D”. Is there is way to reformat again and put the operating system back on the “C”?