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.
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!
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.
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?
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?
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.
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?
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
I have a Dell XPS 400 and I'm running off of a 500 gb barracuda harddrive. Here's my problem. When I try to boot up my computer I got the following error a second or two after the windows logo shows up "A Problem has been detected and windows has shut down to prevent damage to your computer." The error code is STOP: 0x00000024 (0x00190203,0x85D97A98, 0xC0000102, 0x00000000) When I insert my windows disc, I get the following error "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer". I searched online and attempted to integrate my harddrive drivers onto my windows disc. This is the source from which I got my drivers http://support.dell.com/support/down...&fileid=173456. I then proceed to use a program called Nlite to create a new windows disc, and burnt that disc using a program called imgburner. When I use that disc and press F6 during set up I get the following message "Setup could not determine the type of one or more mass storage devices installed in your system, or you have chosen to manually specify an adapter.
I will try to make this brief. I have a dell dimension 2400 that the hd went down. I have a like new IBM drive installed, the bios recognizes it, however, I cannot get the computer to re-install the cd that i have from dell to reinstall xp. i have the boot sequence to start with the cd, however all I get is press f1 to try again, for f2 for setup.
when I try to install XP onto a new hard drive it hangs on the first blue setup page with windows setup showing on the top line and nothing at the bottom to continue with. I updated the BIOS on the original motherboard and have now fitted a new MB but still the problem is the same. Everything was fine before the original drive went down with death rattles.
My brother has a Dell laptop that came pre-loaded with Vista. He asked me to remove it and install XP for him. I've re-installed XP on several computers but I'm stuck here.
When I boot from my XP disk, I press enter to install a new copy of XP, but then it says it cannot find a hard drive and setup cannot continue
my system crashed for no reason. when i started it back up, it was in dos with the menu of 4 boot options. hard drive, cd rom etc.. it wont boot from hard drive so i put the windows disc in and tried to boot from it. it tried to setup but it said it cant find a hard drive and to exit setup.
i want to install an application on my system, but the setup does not come in a good setup format. That is, when i click the file it normally ask me to select what i want to use to open the file, which is wrong for a setup. Please help me on what to do to my operating system
I am having a problem understanding when I load windows xp pro.before I did it without no problems,what I mean by that is my hard drives.I have two of them both are 500gb.one I had for avid editing and the c drive for other stuff like software.I guess I just got lucky before.I had both of them 500gb.but what I need to know please remember I am not a genius
i just installed windows xp pro i had layin around just for the hell of it, and it turns out that it had SP0. my internet connection is extremely slow at the moment so it would be painful to download service pack 2. i have a winxp home cd that has SP2 included on that. is there anyway i can install it off that, with out formatting and using XP home?
On my pc, I had one drive with Windows 98 on it, and one drive with Windows XP on it Windows 98 was on drive C: XP was on D: They were set up so I could choose which one to boot to at start up I wanted to get rid of the 98 entirely, so I edited the boot ini, just removing the entry for windows 98 after restarting the computer, everything was fine....going directly to XP so I wanted to format the 98 drive so I could use it as additional storage, which I did using norton partition magic, I then shut down my computer......turned it back on.....and I get an error saying: NTLDR is missing.
I was posting some pictures to a bird forum last night and when I tried opening a folder I was told that the hard drive, c:, was nor formatted and asked whether I wished to format it. Naturally I clicked on No and tried to contain my mounting panic. I defragmented the hard drive and was told that the defragmentation process was successful apart from 123 Kb in My Pictures - I'm assuming this refers to the problem folder though originally that contained a lot more data. The files are all backed up so I tried to delete the folder but was told this was not possible as the "catalogue is not empty". In the end I just renamed the folder "Black Hole" in case I click at the wrong time and accidently reformat the harddrive. Under Windows 98 I would have run Scan Disk to see whether there was physical damage to the harddrive and repair or at least isolate the damaged section. As I recall that's not possible with XP. I thought of restoring an earlier configeration but I'm not sure when the problem arose. I really have 2 questions.
1. Is there a likelyhood of a serious problem with the harddrive? 2. How can I get rid of the folder and prevent the same thing from happening again? I'm not sure if it's relevant but I have a dsl connection with a firewall from Zone Labs, a virus progamme (McAfee) and I regularly scan the harddrive using Spybot and Adaware.
Yeah I have reformatted my hard drives a few times over the years so I am no stranger to it however I am just curious about something. When I go to reformat with my DELL Windows XP Home Edition CD I will then revert back to SP1. I have SP3 installed onto my computer right now. I also have a SP2 CD I got from Microsoft about 3 years ago or so. Should I first install the SP2 cd or is there no need to do that seeing SP3 should have all of SP2 updates in it?
How can I unformat a flash drive? I formatted it to make it bootable to try to run feather linux which didn't work. Anyway, I am trying to get it back to where it was before. I tried HP's usb format utility, but it doesn't see it as it won't even show up in my computer. it does show up as a storage device to unplug but that is all.
I need to know if I can take a drive out of my friend's tower, and put it in my tower as a slave drive to format it, will it be a bootable drive back in my friend's tower? Or will it still read as a slave drive with no OS files? I have to do this because my friend lost his Win XP Pro SP1 disk, and all I have is a Win XP Pro disk with no SP on it, I have a separate downloaded SP1 file, but if I try to use that, it will chop their harddrive from 200 gigs down to 130'ish, like it did with my 160 gig drive Or maybe I could create a new Windows install CD with SP1 on it already.
a few days ago i had a problem performing a clean install of Windows XP which is on another thread Link below: URL...I now have managed to install XP on my 60GB drive but when i try to format my 400gb SATA drive i cannot. BIOS Sees my SATA drive and windows XP sees the drive as Unallocated. I tried formatting it in windows and Partition Magic 8 and both times windows seems to crash and hangs and there is nothing i can do but reboot to get back into windows.
I friend of mine is working on my pc for me. I'm putting in a new main HD (since mine crapped out) it's 80G. I also have a new 320G backup HD that he's putting in. Well he's got everything going and XP pro loaded up but says that he normally formats a drive with a program off a floppy. My PC doesn't have a floppy drive nor does the MB support one. He said he used XP to format the drive (which he's never used XP to format a drive) and the BIOS is saying 320G is there but windows is saying only 8G is there. Any idea what's wrong?
I have a Dell computer where one of the loading .dll files came up 'missing' one day, so it won't boot. I want to get all the photos and other docs off the hard drive. I had downloaded one version of linux and was able to see the files on the internal hard drive, but was unable to copy them to a memory stick or external hard drive. Now I've downloaded ubuntu and booted off a memory stick... this time, it's telling me that the internal hard drive has all kinds of bad sectors and won't let me access any of the files on there.
i had to purchase a new hard drive due to multiple errors on my hard drive. My brand new drive is the same exact model as my old one but when i try to install xp on the new drive i get as far as formatting the drive and the computer shuts off and wont turn back on. I have to unplug it, let it sit for a little but and then plug it back in and it will start up again.
we have an XP box at work we use for testing custom apps we create...we threw in an extra drive and put Vista on this drive just to test out our apps...after testing, we removed the drive (and hence Vista) leaving just the main drive with XP...our boot options still list Vista as a boot option..i know fixmbr works with XP, but there is another command (can't remember what it is, never used it) for Vista...using XP, can i use the fixmbr command to remove the Vista boot option? if not, how should i remove the second boot option from XP?
I may have to reformat my entire hard drive and reinstall a totally new, legal copy of either Windows XP Home SP2 or Pro SP2. Do NOT ask me how I know this! IF I want to format c:, what's the right process and sequence for doing this, and then reinstalling Windows from a CD?