Reformatting... Reinstall XP ahh!

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SurfWrestler89

Windows XP Home Edition

K.. 1st off my computer has been goin good since i got it but i built up a bunch of useless stuff over a year so now i want to just completely wipe everything and start from new. I started having alot of probs with viruses and it was just over all very slow. I tried to reinstall windows using the disk followed instructions from another site but i ended up just installing xp again on the same drive. So now i have to xp's, all the same problems, and less disk space. I tried just going to C:/ and reformatting but everytime i try to do it an error occurs...

"windows cannot format, quit any disk utilities being used and exit all windows showing this drive"

I exited everything that uses the disk with task manger even under "Processes" and still wont work

Basically my goal is to get everything off my hard drive, reinstall windows clean and start over like it was the day I 1st built my comp... thanx
 
Boot up with the xp cd in the drive and repartition your hard drive. then reformat it and then continue with loading xp. This will delete all your stuff on the hard drive.
If your machine won't boot from the cd then go into the bios and change the boot sequence to boot from the cd rom first.
 
I agree with everythign hodsocks said except for repartition. Why? Just let the XP install tell you that you have a C drive and then it will complain about it having a previous windows install on it, you just continue, telling it to format the drive. Then all is well.
 
Basically if you can boot from your XP cd it will ask you what you want to do, the instructions are very understandable. What you want to do is a NEW INSTALLATION, it will likely give you a couple screens before it begins, in those screens 1 will be asking you where you want to install, pick your C drive.
It will then tell you that another installation of windows already exists there, you have the option to continue or back out at this point.
Continue.
Then it will ask you if you want to leave the current file system intact. You don't want to do that, you want to format the drive (its an option), pick FAT32 or NTFS, I don't think in your situation it matters which one you choose. I like FAT32 cause I don't need special software on a floppy to read it from a boot floppy, but almost everyone else on these forums says definately use NTFS.
Then it will format it and start the installation.
 
I'm facing the same problem as SurfWrestler89....What can b done???...can someone pls help me about this...

I jus cant seem to reformat my computer....it keeps promting this :
"windows cannot format, quit any disk utilities being used and exit all windows showing this drive"

OR says " U can install Win XP as you are using a newer version of XP"...Acttually i had used the same CD- to install before and now wen i'm using the second time to reformat...its giving me problem...

Is there any way to solve this problem?? Pls help someone...
Thanksss
 
Hello April and welcome to Techspot

You need to do the following.

1 restart your computer and go to stetup usually by pressing the F2 or delete key.

2 Once you get into setup look for the boot menu and make sure you set it to boot from cd first followed by your hard drive.

3 Put the Windows xp disk into your cd.

4 Now save your settings and exit setup.

5 While your computer is booting you will see a message that says "press any key to boot from cd" press any key.

6 When the welcome to setup screen appears press enter and then press F8 to accept the Microsoft licence agreement.

7 You will be prompted to repair an insallation press the escape key.

8 Now select the partition that you want to reformat and press the D key to delete it you will be asked to confirm that you want to delete the partition.

9 Now press C to create a brand new partition you will be asked what size you want the partition to be in mega bytes. If you just press enter then the partition will be the maximum size that you can have. This is perfectly ok if you don`t want to create multiple partitions.

10 You will now be asked to format the partition select the ntfs file sytem and do a full format.

11 Once the format is complete setup will continue.

Your computer will restart during the remaining setup again you will be asked to press any key to boot from cd DO NOT PRESS ANYTHING. and setup will continue. Once the setup is complete and you are back in Windows remove the Windows cd from your cd drive.

I hope this helps.

Regards Howard



:wave: :wave:
 
I recently got a new computer and my old computer had a ton of spyware, adware, viruses, etc. on it so I went ahead and did "format c:"

Now when I boot up the computer and try to install XP fresh from nothing, it doesn't do anything. I hit boot from CD-ROM and it just sits there flashing the _ key. Can anyone help me out? I've been trying to reload this for a couple months now and so far, nothing.
 
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