clearing hard drive

[Lady_Magick]

I want to clear my hard drive and start a fresh with a O/S (Windows XP). Can someone tell me how to do it or give me a link to a site that explains it?

Thanks

 

[TheChef]

What you want to do is run FDISK. It is the program that Windows gives you to reformatting your Hard Drive ("clearing" it). I found a website that will make it a whole lot easier for you.

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

That will allow you to pick up a bootdisk for any OS you are running. When you download this, save it to a floppy or burn it to a CD. Now reboot your computer with the floppy in the drive, DURING the reboot. It will reboot(if your BIOS is set correctly) to a screen that says A:/ . Type fdisk. When you get into FDISK, enable large disk support and select "Delete Primary DOS partition", assuming you are running a Windows OS. Select the number of the partition you want to delete (probably you only have one that you will want to delete, the one with your current form of Windows.) Now hit the escape button after you delete the partition, and check the status of you HD by Looking in the "Display Partition Information" section. If no partitions are displayed ... . Now reboot you computer AFTER taking out the floppy, witht the XP CD in. YOu should be homefreee from there.

 

[kof2000]

actually you dont need to do that. just boot ur windows xp cd from cd rom at bootup and it will detect that you already have windows installed and will prompt if you want to do a format. or just install to another directory for a dual os boot installation.