Formatting A Laptop Hard Drive - Full OEM Version
Jun 23, 2005
This forum has been incredibly helpful, and now I must ask another "ignorant" question to maintain my computer loving insanity. I recently acquired a used laptop running XP Home. I use Pro for work, so I thought it wise to install Pro over the top of the the former owners' OS and thereby effectively delete his old files etc. Well, what I found was that Windows simply imported the old OS info right into the new install, leaving folders, files and programs I didn't want on the hard drive. So my question for you guys and gals is this. How do I destroy everything on my hard drive, then make the laptop (without floppy drive available), accept the reloading of my XP Pro CD? It is a full OEM version by the way. If I can format the HD, and have BIOS boot from CD-ROM, will I have a "fresh" CD-only install at that point, or will there still be little goblins of information running around in my system
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Jan 17, 2006
I want to format my hard drive ( been two years ) ! It is now running XP Pro, which I do not have the discs, and I want to switch back to XP Home, which I have one disc that came with the computer !I've tried booting up with the disk, so that I can format my hard drive, but nothing happens!
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Dec 29, 2005
How does one go about formatting the hard drive?
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Feb 11, 2009
I'm at my wits end. I was queried by my computer to clean up my hard drive because it was full. ( I wasn't downloading anything).This seemed very odd to me as I always clean up my hardrive regularly.I usually defrag my hardrive every few weeks and the last time I did it I had 29% free space. Now when I check it I have 0% free space and the hard drive has over 20000 fragmented files, I've never seen it look like this.I ran spyware and came back no threats.Something has filled up my hardrive unexplainable.I've tried a lot of things from system restore to chkdsk.
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Sep 20, 2008
I'm formatting my hard drive and re-installing XP, and I'm wondering if I can delete the system partition without any adverse effects to the system. When I try to delete it from the XP Setup disk, it warns me not to do it, but I'm trying to create a larger partition for the system. Can I delete the system partition and create a new one.
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Feb 19, 2008
I got a new system assembled a month back and after 15 days the stop error began to happen (this was after my bro tried to transfer files from his iPod & it didn't happen). I looked up a lot of forums but didn't find this one and couldn't figure out what the problem might be. Restored system, disabled services, but nothing worked. Finally I got the C: drive formatted and Win XP SP2 reinstalled. Didn't install unnecessary/extra software this time. But I found this site a day before getting it formatted, so saved the last 5 minidump files. And the day after the reinstallation, it has started happening again. The first time it was the bcmndis.sys file -- Airtel Beetel 220bx modem -- connected with the USB; couldn't find another driver for it online.
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Jan 5, 2007
This is my DAD's personal computer now, we are trying to format his hard drive i get to the point where it asks me whether i want to proceed, i put yes and hit enter, it then doesn't start formatting, it just say C:WINDOWS?
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Nov 4, 2009
My hard drive crashed and I replaced it with a new 500G hard drive. I reloaded Windows XP and I'm using the new hard drive as my main drive. It only shows that I have 137G Total size of the drive. How do I get it see all of the 500G hard drive?
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Apr 30, 2006
AOL Check Up says my Hard Drive is over 85% full, and to get rid of some files. How and which files should I get rid of?
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Jun 21, 2005
I have a 40GB hard drive with Windows 98 installed. Today I upgraded to XP and find that my hard drive is almost full. This can't be right.
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Feb 2, 2009
My girlfriend's laptop has had hardly any space on it for a long time. It's 120GB with about 105GB of useable space. After selecting all items (including hidden) in the C drive, and clicking properties, the collective size is 51GB. However, when I click properties on the C drive from 'My Computer' it says Used Space: 101GB. Free Space: 4.36GB. I don't know what happened to the other 54GB.I saw a similar problem on this site, and it was resolved by turning off system restore. I tried this and it only freed and extra 3 or so GB. This is a really frustrating problem and I haven't a clue what to do next.
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Sep 11, 2009
I have an Acer Aspire notebook, w/ 37 gig hard drive partitioned into two drives. D (backup, archive) is 98% empty. C (everything else) is91% full. Windows NT will not let me defragment the heavily fragmented C partition for lack of minimum 15% free space on the drive. How can I go in and reasign the drive sizes, without dumping everything and reformating? I'm handy with a power tool, but computers frustrate me.
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Apr 1, 2005
Fitted an extra HDD to my machine. Detected in bios but XP will not find it. Drive is unformatted (new), how do you format in windows XP. It was easy in 98SE, just go to dos, fdisk then format. How do you do this in XP?
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Jan 13, 2007
I know theres heaps of partition and format tools out there to help you do certain things, but what i was wondering is instead of formatting the old fashioned way, and losing everything, is there a way i can format and not lose anything, so i dont have to do a million re installs? my hard drive is partitioned NTFS. and i have my C: where all my windows files are stored seperate to all my other drives.
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Apr 8, 2008
I have been trying to format my hard drives. I tried using Device Manager, it let me format my E drive, but not the C drive, and then I tried by booting with the XP CD. Somehow I managed to install Windows on my E drive, and my C drive is still as it was. I have been following the instructions on how to format and install to the letter, but it's not happening for me. All of the screens match what the instructions say, but the result is nothing.I have searched this forum for HD/XP advice, and have done as suggested, no luck.How do I format my C drive, and start again?
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Sep 24, 2005
I recently installed Xilinx ISE 6.3i (a software to program digital design circuits)After the installation I found out that every time I plug in my USB Flash Drive, the system does not recognize it. I spotted the reason was this program. In one of the step of installation, this option appears:"Platform Cable USB Driver (IMPORTANT: OS support info bellow)The Platform Cable USB utilizes driver technology that requires Win2000 SP4 or greater or WinXP SP1 or greater. You may install this driver now if you do not have the proper version, but the cable will not work properly until you upgrade your OS version."
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Mar 7, 2005
Dell 4500 with 256mb RAM 40 gB hard drive. Son tries to load game and system says not enough memory. Only 4gB free. I update ZA, Spybot, Adaware and Norton and run everything. Find 3 non-viral potential threats through NAV. update spywareblaster. Run diskcleanup and empty temp internet files. These are all things I do regularly (not every day but more than twice a wweek) and I backup to external drive once a month at least
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Dec 22, 2006
I have a laptop which after I purchased it and installed my own backup utility and created an image. I then started my windows xp home eddition with the cd and went to the section to redo the partitions. I deleted the partion for the recovery however after doing so it is not shown as unpartiton space. The system should have 80 gb hard drive however the statement above the partion says only 75gb is available to use. This is the same total as on the control panel / disc management. How can I get XP to recognize the entire hard drive space?
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Jan 8, 2006
I just did a partial run of BCwipe, just 2 scans, because I had to shut the computer down and now my hard drive is full!! Before using BCwipe, I had at least half of the drive free. What happend and what can I do now?
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Jan 24, 2006
I have several thousand fragments of files from using system restore on Windows XP Professional that cannot be defragmented from my hard drive. I only have fifteen percent of free space left and that was after I removed several programs. Disk cleanup only heleped minimally.
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Feb 7, 2010
Hi. My problem is similar to this one here
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-12546_102-0.html?threadID=295044
Except I am not running Vista and don't have AOL on there.
Also, I don't think my drive is actually full, or if it is, it's because of something that Sonic or Windows did.
I have a bunch of computers. This Dell laptop, Inspiron E1505, is one I primarily use to watch DVD's or online shows. There were a lot of programs installed, because I used to use it regularly, and then I loaned it to someone for about a year. It had very few files in terms of documents, pictures, music, or videos, because I had cleaned all that out before I loaned it to her, and I got a new laptop, and so only use this one to watch DVD's. Also, I should mention it has a fairly new DVD recorder because the old one died a few months back.
Sometimes I use this laptop to burn or copy disks, which is what I have been doing the past two days, using the program Sonic Digital Media LE v7, which came preinstalled. It was working fine copying dvd's (legal copies of ones I recorded myself) until yesterday, when it suddenly said that my hard drive was full and to free up "0 kb" in order to proceed.
When I close the program after this error, it gives me three crash messages (every time).
First one says MediaHub.exe application error.
The instruction at "0x0035afd0" reference memory at "0x35171ae8". The memory could not be "written". Click on OK to terminate the program."
The next error is almost exactly the same but gives all the numbers as 0x00000000.
The third error is Microsoft Visual C++ RUntime Library Runtime Error! program: mediahub.exe
R6025 - pure virtual function call.
At first, rebooting helped this problem, but then I got the error again. So I ran disk cleanup. It took a really long time and then the pc turned itself off. I turned it back on and it said that the pc had overheated because the fan vents were blocked. The vent is on the bottom, and was very dirty (possibly because my friend was a heavy smoker), so I wiped it off with a damp napkin. I rebooted and ran disk cleanup again. I was able to copy disks again until it gave me the error again. Every time I go to the C drive and check the disk free space, it gives me very little there, but I know that it's not because of any files I have on there.
Anyway, I also uninstalled all of the unimportant programs and deleted any extra files I could find. I want to run check disk, but I got an error message and it said it would run it next time I rebooted (that didn't help and check disk still didn't run, and still wouldn't run next time I tried it). I tried to run disk defragmenter, but it said I only had 5% hard drive space left and it needs 15%. I ran it anyway, and it seemed to work, and I was able to copy more disks.
Now I am getting that error message again.
I am running disk cleanup again, compressing old files, so we'll see if that works. I haven't tried System Restore yet, will try that one next. I really would rather not reinstall Windows.
Thanks for any suggestions!
Suzanne Lanoue
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Apr 7, 2010
I have spent a long time struggling with Windows over different errors, which all lead back to page file problems, which ultimately all led back to my RAM. I found this out after XP's system file went irreparably corrupt, when my hackintosh (installed on a different hard drive) started experiencing the same problems.Bad RAM has been removed, and I'm trying to reinstall XP. I formatted the drive using OSX's Disk Utility program, wrote zeros to the entire surface, and partitioned it in FAT32 (Disk Utility can not format to NTSC).When I use my CD to reinstall Windows, it does not read the full drive. It instead offers to install XP on a 130gb drive where my 640gb drive is. If I follow it through, it installs just fine, but it formats my 640gb drive to only have one usable NTSC partition of 130gb.The last time I attempted this, I removed every drive and storage device from my computer except for the 640gb drive and the same thing still happened.
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Dec 1, 2008
My brother recently bought a new HP desktop PC so he wants to sell his old laptop (Compaq Presario 700, Windows XP Home Edition) and we both agreed we should do a full restore to completely wipe the hard drive clean to it's original slate and we have the original Compaq ''QuickRestore'' discs and for whatever reason, they're not working. There is three CD's and not a single scratch or mark on any of them. I've tried to run all three on the laptop and the only thing that happens is that the folder containing the discs files on it is what pops up and no actual setup occurs like it says on the little piece of paper that comes with the CD's.
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Nov 24, 2009
Your hard drive is suddenly full and you are left wondering where did all my free space go? Now you must begin the task of deleting old files and folders to reclaim space but where do you start? In the past I would suggest manually checking the sizes of all of your folders so you know where to begin the hunt but now there is a great utility called WinDirStat that does the work for you. After inspecting a drive you are shown exactly how much data is in each folder, what file types are taking up the most space and even a visual representation of the files on your disk
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Aug 5, 2010
My laptop died and I removed the hard drive.i hooked the hard drive up to my new laptop via a SATA/IDE cable.
I can see the old hard drive in the E drive and it appears that all the contents are there by the size of the hard drive (same as when I had it in the old laptop) but I can only see, actually view, a very small percentage of the drive.
My goal: I want to transfer all old music, word documents and photos from old laptop into new laptop.
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Aug 10, 2010
Two weeks ago I installed win7 on my system,but 3 days ago,bacause of some problems,I decided to uninstall it and to setup an older version.But unfortunately I had many problems to setup another one.Although I had the related DVD in DVD drive,after some seonds it asked for the DVD labeled Win XP.Anyhow finally I could setup win XP 2002,but windows only recognizes drive C with capacity of 100GB and I don't have my other drives as before.For your information it's NTFS.I decided to setup Win7
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Sep 12, 2009
Oem disc auto partions any hdd as 16GB os fat 32/D:\ drive NTFS raw. The Sony OEM disc(s) are pre sp1.
What steps do I take to install and get the full 200 GB to bea recoginized correctly?
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Sep 25, 2007
something really weird is happening to my pc.in my hard drive, with a size is 60 gb, i have a folder, inside my docs, that says that i have 42 gb of things. but when a look inside that folder there is nothing. i saw in each folder inside documents and setings and nothing.i saw in temps folders inside of windows folder and i ran the windows utility to clean up and mantainance of my hard drive and i got nothing as a result.i tried crap cleaner, and its usefull, but the problem persist. i dont have a lot of apps installed or mp3 org jpg, files, so i dont know how to start.
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Jul 9, 2005
My son has a Dell desktop 2.66 ghz. It has XP home on it. I have reinstalled XP twice but it does not come up to reformat the hard drive. At the partition stage it says nothing about formatting. I cannot delete the main partition. How can I format the harddrive? I am using the Dell version of XP that came with the computer
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Nov 27, 2007
My computer, actually both of my computers, have been running extremely slow lately and they have so much junk on them that I want to get off. I know that just removing them and deleting files will not solve anything seeing as the hard drive is never fully deleted, but i have heard that there is a way of reformating your hard drive. My goal is to put my computers back into the condition they were when I first bought them. I have a Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, Version 2002, Service Pack 2, and I would be really thankful if someone could help me put my computer back to the way it was. I am not at all interested in keeping personal files or anything on my computer, I just want the computer exactly the way it was when I first bought it with the programs that were already preinstalled still in it.
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Jul 20, 2005
I have a computer that came with OEM Windows Me and I want to upgrade to Windows
XP Pro. Is it possible to acquire a retail upgrade version of Windows XP for that
machine?
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