Reformat hard drive under XP?

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”?

I keep loosing disk space all the time. I don't have enough space on hard drive to defragment. Any suggesstions? I have a 4.00 GB hard drive and only 2 MB left on hard drive, but I have deleted so many programs. Shows in the add/remove programs that I have only 89.22 MB used space. Will reformating hard drive solve problem?

EDITOR'S NOTE: If you really meant to say 4GB hard drive, then that's TINY by modern standards -- just barely enough to run Windows XP. I think you would be best served by adding a second drive, or replacing the current one. You can get a 1 teraybyte drive (1000 GB) for under $100 now.

Yay!!! Thank you for the clear and easy instructions! It worked beautifully! A side note, I had to go to a different search to understand how to change my BIOS options so that my windows cd would actually boot first! When you are rebooting your computer, you must press ESC at the beginning to access your BIOS boot options...Changed it from floppy to cd-rom as first boot and voila!

Thank you!!! I tried several different suggestions and FINALLY I tried yours and it worked!!!!

I recently reformatted 2 laptops of mine and both of them are missing programs (despite my installing all the driver cd's). On my old Compaq Presario 2200, the driver for the wireless card is missing, and there are like 8 software products on the Compaq website under wireless drivers for my computer. On my Dell mini 910, I am missing Windows search (which is critical) and the Dell Webcam software (not so critical).

hi bob,i have problem with my computer,i can run every program,play every game,but when i try to play music in winamp or windows media player my computer freezes,when i try to open system restore nothing happens,i run anti virus scan had only one virus but it didn't help,and last night i did disc defragment with smart defrag,since that i have this problem...i don't want to reinstall windows if i don't need to...can you please help me...?

how do i reformat my hard drive from the plugs on it i dont remember how to do it

Dear Bob, from one geek to another: I just need to mention something about the process or reformatting. you had stated something that is partially correct, but not completely. You CAN (with a retail copy of XP and not a preinstalled factory CD) use the "upgrade" style to do a new install from within windows, which does at that point allow for formatting, just not through the command prompt since windows is using it and trying to protect it from accidental deletion.

Here is my trick, if you are not comfortable/unable to boot from your xp cd, boot into windows, insert the CD, run setup from there which will somehow magically allow a format with no problem, and you can use this "upgrade style" option to do a fresh install also. It will work, as I've done it numerous times with excellent results.

Take care all, Jason.

bob,...i have this problem with my computer that's been troubling me for quite some time now....folders on my desk top are corrupted,some games i have downloaded and some programs i can not open.i don't know what is causing this...can you pls. help me? thanx...

EDITOR'S NOTE: That's hard to diagnose. If multiple files and folders are corrupted, it could be a hard drive failure, bad sectors due to a power surge, or some software gone awry. Have you tried running CHKDSK? See http://askbobrankin.com/scandisk_doesnt_work_on_windows_xp.html

dear bob,
can you pls. teach me the elementary basics on how to reformat a hard disk...? thanx...willie

For all who want to format a hard disk you should backup ur data with an online storage software ,like http://www.dmailer.com/dmailer-backup.html , after this follow this steps:
-Place bootable windows disk in cd-drive
-follow the steps to reach instalattion
-delete all partitions and make new ones
-choose the partition to be installl and format it

Hi Bob, I use Windows XP Professional. I created 4 partitions (C, D, E and F; C for running the system). I recently installed Windows 7 Ultimate on the F. But I had some trouble with some of the programs I use, so I wanted to uninstall it. As far as I know, the only way to do this is to reformat the partition on which the OS is installed. But when I opened disk managament, the option to reformat the partition is just grayed out. How do I work around this? I want to remove 7 without affecting XP. I have a lot of data on the other partitions.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The problem is that you cannot format the active partition -- the one you booted from. Boot from a different partition and you should be able to delete the F: partition.

I am trying to reformat my hard drive with windows xp but when I boot from CD, it starts to load files and when it gets to "setup is starting windows" I get the blue screen of death and it tells me that a problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. I'm not sure if this matters, but I believe I am trying to install an older version of windows xp (previously I sent my computer to the shop and I think they put a newer version on it). Please help. Thanks,
Karen

Formatting a hard drive is not that complicated but before any procedures are carried out, you should backup all important documents and files. Either backup to a cd/dvd or use an external storage drive. Why? Because formatting your hard drive will erase all your files and settings. You can use tools such as Mozilla backup to save any browser settings, favourites or thunderbird settings and there are plenty of such tools for Outlook and Internet Explorer. One recommendation I would make is to either have two hard drives in your system and dedicate one to the operating system and one to your data and files. This makes future operating system upgrades or re-installs a breeze. If you don't have the luxury of two drives you can always split the partitions into two. Make one partition at least 50GB for the operating system (I usually make mine 74GB) and make the rest for your data. You can create partitions during the installation of your operating system as Windows gives you this option.
http://www.harddiskdriverepair.com/format/hard-drive-partition-format.html

You can format all the harddisk except for the one with windows in it. By setting virtual memory to "no paging file" on the hard disk you wanted to format.

Doing that by open "hardware manager" under "Advance" tab, Performance, setting, Advance tab, then click "Change" Then has to restart.

Hope this help also don't forget to change it back after formating. It kinda amaze me that noone mention this technic before : )

Greetings to you Bob, I had Erased my western digital external hard drive and was was trying to re install it, but it's a plug and play How do i get XP Pro to see it and get it to work??
Thank you..

These directions don't correlate with the OS system CD I used. It doesn't give me any of these options and tells me I can't reinstall b/c the version of XP I'm running is "newer" (aka has been updated) than the one on the CD....

Ok, when I turm my computer off and set it to reboot from cd, it loads up like it allways does. Its like it wont read the disk or something. Could you pleas help me or give me some advice?