Formatting in Windows XP

[Fraki]

My friend has Windows XP and he needs to know how to format his hard drive.

I told him the way I had done it (MS-Dos: format c:\) but I'm on Windows 98, and he said that it didn't work for him.

[EvilCensor]

Tell your friend to boot up from the XP CD - the options he needs are there.

[Atomic-Design]

It depends on the format he wants to do. He probably wants to do the type of format that Evil has told you how to do. If he wants to do a low-level format it's a lot more confusing than that.

[Andrax]

Use a boot disk.

then you will be at the a:

type Fdisk which will look like

A:Fdisk

This will take you into the FDISK utility you will want to hit Y at the first intro page that will enable LARGE disk support.

Then you will just need to read the options. Your going to need to delete partition

once in there you will be deleting the NON DOS partition, because the partition you want to blow away is NTFS.

Once thats done you will need to create a PRIMARY partition on that drive.

Once it does its thing, reboot the machine with the XP disk in the CD ROM and go to it.

You can not use a DOS boot disk to do ANYTHING to an NTFS drive as far as a "format" or to browse the drive.

[metarose]

I know this is a month later , but when installing XP you have the choice of formating FAT32 or NTFS. NTFS is the "Native" file system type for XP. It can be a lot different to most users. You can use a win98 boot disk to pre-format the drive as FAT32 but that is not neccessary because as Evil mentioned the XP CD has all the tools you need built into the install (which runs from boot up!) If you have an older machine that does not boot from the cd the xp disk is useless untill you can run the setup program. Fortunatly microsoft released a file for creating a 6 floppy boot disk set for the install (the cheep-scates) make it available for download @MS website. It comes in 2 flavors Pro & Home. Make the disks and run the install. In the XP setup when you get to partitioning you have the choice to go FAT32 or NTFS, NTFS is best as it does not fragment as easily therfore bitrot is kept to a minimum adding to it's stability. if you want you would be able to run the older OS version in addition to XP {unless it is win-me, in which case you will want to watch the the electromagnetic fiz flash it's electric blue spirit through the abused partition that was fored to be possesed of the win-me deamon, you will be proforming an exorcism and gain God's good Grace... (UNLESS YOU ARE REPLACING WIN-ME WITH XP HOME EDITION WHERBY YOU ASSURE YOUR PLACE IN THE LIVING HELL HERE AND AN AFTERLIFE.) } Win98 and XP Pro will happily co-exist but 98 has to be installed first. Actually I have a box with 98/XPpro/SuSE7.3Rpro tri-boot, they are all very happy together in their little menagetwa (sp) :) Just follow the Install instructions it is easy, and do yourself a long term favor use NTFS.

Paul

[tjplaw]

You need to get a boot disk, I Use a Windows 98 boot disk.

Re-boot with the floppy in the drive, start with cd rom support and re format from there, I reformatt my hard drive roughly every 6 months whether The computer needs it ot not.

I've never had any trouble doing a format this way