Reformatting a laptop

[Darksaber11]

I'm currently looking to buy this laptop, and I was wondering about re-formatting it's HD. I don't like the winXP home operating system, and I already have a WinXP Pro. disc, so if I could buy it without an operating system at all I would.
The thing that has me worried is the actual re-formatting. I've re-formatted my desktop (WinXP Pro.) before, but it wasn't pretty. We ended up slaving it to another drive since WinXP won't allow you to do it from the inside. I'm sure there must be some way to do it that makes more sense than that, and I could probably find it in the help file, but what I don't know is if it would be the same for a laptop.

 

[Nodsu]

You do it by booting from the Windows CD.

 

[Darksaber11]

You do it by booting from the Windows CD.

In my experiance that doesn't work, what am I doing wrong?

 

[Nodsu]

You shouldn't let the chicken run around indoors..

I have no idea what you could be doing wrong since we don't really know what you are doing at all.

In the laptop's BIOS setup make sure you have set the CDROM to be used before the hard drive in boot sequence. When the computer starts up you are prompted to press any key to boot from the CD.

 

[PanicX]

You'll want to check if the laptop has a special restore disk. Often times these disks preload drivers for your laptop that are necessary for windows setup to complete successfully.

 

[imsorussian]

formating laptop is not anydifferent from desktop, what you need to do, is get into BIOS settings, before installing anything, and change the boot sequence, put cd-rom as 1st boot, second HDD, put winxp cd in, (save settings) and reboot, you should have no problem, works for my laptop/desktop everytime. Good Luck

 

[imsorussian]

If the laptop is not stolen, you can request a complete installation for your systemm from manufactory. I know dell does it

 

[Darksaber11]

You shouldn't let the chicken run around indoors..

In the past, when I have tried re-installing winxp on my desktop it has just installed it over everything currently on my HD.

Edit: What I mean is: it didn't erase anything that was already there.

 

[imsorussian]

Well the reason why it is not earasing anything from your computer is because you only REINSTALLING windows xp ( operating system), what formatting does is completely erases ALL data from your computer.( so before you do that, make sure you copy on cd, personal or important stuff, like pictures or what ever is valuable to you, cause when you FORMAT you'll loose it all. Formatting is good to do, when you have so much CRAP on your computer,(missing files) basicaly very disorganised. there is few ways to do format, if you need to know how to do it, you can ask me, and i'll tell you step by step. good luck

 

[Darksaber11]

Well the reason why it is not earasing anything from your computer is because you only REINSTALLING windows xp ( operating system), what formatting does is completely erases ALL data from your computer.( so before you do that, make sure you copy on cd, personal or important stuff, like pictures or what ever is valuable to you, cause when you FORMAT you'll loose it all. Formatting is good to do, when you have so much CRAP on your computer,(missing files) basicaly very disorganised. there is few ways to do format, if you need to know how to do it, you can ask me, and i'll tell you step by step. good luck

Okay, sorry I wasn't clear but formatting was what I meant to ask about, I was a little sick for that last post (actually, still am) so it sounded all wrong.

My problem is that winXP does not allow you to format from inside the OS. I know how to do it assuming I had one of those handy formatting CDs that come with some HDs, but I'm pretty sure that the laptop I've ordered does not come with one of those.

Any help here would be much appreciated.