How To Properly Format Your HD

[GreySteelFox]

I think I've been doing it wrong for a year now. I pop in disc and just reinstall windows but there are still music files left after I'm done. Am I even doing this right?

 

[dude_se]

are you doing a repair installation? what music files are they?
you can format using the xp disk and it should be just as good. i recon your just repairing
edit: like the username

 

[GreySteelFox]

I select the install new copy thing and I guess its going all well. The music files are just songs and music that always stays on the HD even when I selected the delete everything from this partition. Makes me a little suspicious that it isnt really a "fresh copy" of XP pro.

Oh and I switched from Home to Pro yesterday.

 

[Gamingfreak]

ur just installing windows over and over ur not actually formatting the drive, u do that by putting the disk in then going into the bios and telling it to boot off the cd drive and when u restart it should say something like "press any key to boot off disk" so just press any key then off u go

 

[Kage]

Yeah, its best to reformat before re-installing. Some viruses, etc and other things will still be there.

 

[GreySteelFox]

Well how do you reformat before reinstalling windows? I boot it from the CD, if that helps. And when I did this yesterday there was only like 90 BG available when its a 120 GB Hard Drive.

 

[dude_se]

make a boot disk (u need a floppy drive). set bios to boot from floppy. then in the command prompt type "fdisk", or you could try "format c:"
the xp setup should still format properly but try these steps aswell

 

[GreySteelFox]

ok can you guys just give me a 1 2 3 list of what to do since if I forget I'm screwed you know.

 

[dude_se]

go to bootdisk.com and find an xp boot disk.
then get a blank floppy disk and make a boot disk.
then re boot and set bios to "boot from floppy". then let it load up.
when you get to the command prompt type "fdisk". "format c:" may also work (i usually have trouble with that one). then when either load just follow the instructions (should be simple enough).

 

[Gamingfreak]

turn off ur comp then hold delete as its turning on to get into the bios, find the boot order and set it so that it boots off the cd drive and put the windows disk in, save and exit which will restart the comp and it will boot off the windows cd and start the setup, from there on it tells u exactly what to do, just make sure it goes through a formatting step