Format a Hard Drive

Format a Hard Drive with Windows XP

# To format a hard drive with Windows XP or 2000, insert Windows CD and restart your computer.

# Your computer should automatically boot from the CD to the Windows Setup Main Menu.

# At the Welcome to Setup page, press ENTER.

# Press F8 to accept the Windows XP Licensing Agreement.

# If an existing Windows XP installation is detected, you are prompted to repair it. To bypass the repair, press ESC.

# Use the ARROW keys to select the partition or the unpartitioned space where you want to create a new partition. Press D to delete an existing partition, or press C to create a new partition.

# Type the size in megabytes (MB) that you want to use for the new partition, and then press ENTER, or just press ENTER to create the partition with the maximum size.


# Select the format option that you want to use for the partition (Recommended: NTFS), and then press ENTER.

# After the Windows Setup program formats the partition, follow the instructions that appear on the screen to continue installing Windows.

Format a Hard Drive with Windows 95, 98

To reinstall Windows, you will need a Startup Diskette and a Windows Installation CD. Download

First of all you will need to boot your PC into Windows. Once you have done this, you need to go Start then shut down and select from the drop down menu "Restart in MS-DOS Mode."

Once you have done this, type cd\ and press enter. Then type format c: with a space in between the format and c. It will then ask you if you want to continue, just type y and then press enter.
Once this is done i always type c:\dir this is to make sure there is nothing on the drive.
For the next stage you MUST HAVE MS-DOS on floppy disks.

Staying in MS-DOS place in your floppy drive your MS-DOS disks to reinstall DOS on your system. Once the disk is in the drive press ctrl alt and del all at the same time. Once your computer restarts it should read the disk that is in the floppy drive and start to install MS-DOS. You will get a few prompts and then just let it install. After installation of DOS take the disk out the floppy drive and open your CD Rom drive and place your Windows CD in. then i usually type D:\ and then return but obiously substitute the letter for your drive. You will then get D:\ .
during the instal from floppy you MAY need to install your CD rom drivers. Make sure you have copies of these on another floppy disk, before you start the formatting process.

After this you will type setup. So you will have something that looks like this.
D:\setup
press enter
D:\SETUP
enter
Setup for Windows 95/98 will then start and then just follow the on screen prompts.

Windows ME

Just do the above again but with in Windows 95/98 open your CD-Rom drive and place the Windows ME disk in. You will then get and auto run box appear. Choose "install Windows ME."

Follow on screen prompts to set it up. Once installation is complete you WILL need to install all your applications and software for your hardware.

Windows 2000

Within Windows 95/98/ME place your Windows 2000 in your CD Rom drive and follow on screen prompts to install Windows 2000.

For Windows XP Home/Professional

If you have the upgrade version just do the same when within Windows 95/98/ME/2000.

If you have the full version you will need to reformat your hard drive (Follow the part labelled Windows 95/98). After you have done this place your Windows XP CD in your CD Rom drive and press ctrl alt and del all at the same time and your cd rom drive should read the XP CD and start to install. Just follow the on screen prompts to install. For Windows XP you may find it best if your hard drives file system is NTFS. But dont worry if it is not.

All Systems

Once you have your PC up and running, make sure that you promptly install and update your antivirus system, and any windows patches.