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tam30over
03-30-2004, 10:31 AM
my son wants to format his drive he`s using windows xp pro and wants to format and re-instal is there any tutorials so that he can read through and do it himself.
thanks for any help
jeepers94
03-30-2004, 10:57 AM
Most drive manufacturers have utilities you can download to make this simple.It is simple enough as it is,but these utilities will make it a snap.Check the drives properties to find out info on the drive.Then go to that drives manufact. support site,download and burn a cd with the utility on.Make sure his computer is set to boot from cd in the bios.Most of these sites will also tell you how do an fdisk,but the utilities are the easier option.
tam30over
03-30-2004, 11:25 AM
is there away to find out the info on the drive without going into the tower
PhilEnfield
03-30-2004, 12:19 PM
Try this :

Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Information/Components/Storage/Disks

This should tell you the Make/Model of all your the Drives, size, partitions etc.

HTH
tam30over
03-30-2004, 12:29 PM
cheers for the help guys i found out it`s a seagate 60 gig im gonna go to the site now to do what was said earlyer in the post
Neo
03-30-2004, 03:46 PM
During a XP installation you can choose to format your hard drive. Windows XP has this feature bult in.
PhilEnfield
03-30-2004, 04:18 PM
Yeah that would be much simpler for him .... just boot with the XP CD in the drive .... he will probably need to change the boot drive sequence in BIOS to go straight to the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Drive.
jeepers94
03-31-2004, 03:28 AM
Yes,I guess it might be easier to format during the XP install.Since it was already had XP installed.I have had trouble with some XP installs where the previous os was 2000 or 98.It seems that the XP installer does not get rid of all the old os.Thus I now use the hard drive ulilities to make sure the drive is totally clean.In my job I install and re-install several hundred hard drives each year and this is my prefered method.It has given me fewer headaches this way!
Neo
03-31-2004, 06:23 AM
If you want XP to get rid of a previous OS then you need to format it. XP does not always do this automatically.
The Firemaster
03-31-2004, 11:20 AM
i too had this problem and fdisked using a win98 bootdisk and removed the partition then win xp pro gives u the option to create a new ntfs partition and then format it and install the o/s, upto you which way you go m8