help reformating hard drive

[csi1189]

so i'm in need of reformatting my laptop's hard drive. it's a dell inspiron 1100 with winxp home. i'll be loading the same os back onto it. however, i've looked all over the web and can't really find a good guide for reformatting on a laptop that doesn't have a floppy drive. can someone please give me a good step by step guide, as this is my first time going through this process. Thanks all.

 

[Trizoy]

Just pop the cd in, and when the computer is loading press f2. Go into the bios and make the cd boot first. Restart computer and follow the windows prompts. It will allow you to partition and format the drive. MAKE SURE YOU BACKUP EVERYTHING YOU WANT..

 

[csi1189]

do i have to uninstall sp2 first?

 

[ckfordy]

do i have to uninstall sp2 first?

nope

 

[csi1189]

ok, so i've successfully reformatted and i'm working on reinstalling programs/putting back all my data, but now there's a bit of an annoyance every time i start up. there's a message asking me which os i want to boot. as if there's 2 installed. but both say winxp home ed. why is this showing? everything else is fine, so i'd like to do everything i can before i go and reformat again. thanks.

 

[Trizoy]

ok, so i've successfully reformatted and i'm working on reinstalling programs/putting back all my data, but now there's a bit of an annoyance every time i start up. there's a message asking me which os i want to boot. as if there's 2 installed. but both say winxp home ed. why is this showing? everything else is fine, so i'd like to do everything i can before i go and reformat again. thanks.

Well this means you did not reformat, but you re installed over the to... Well you have the old one and the new one... You can go here.. right click on my computer, properties, advanced tab, "startup and recovery" click the settings button, and then click the edit button... Paste that in here in the forum, and i will tell you how to edit it... this is what mine looks like.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

 

[Verve]

I want to do the same thing as CSI1189...

But I was just wondering... what does it mean to partition a drive? And why is it important?

 

[Trizoy]

Partitioning a drive allows you to sorta break the drive into seperate pieces.. you can make a drive look like 4 hd's if you want. or keep it as one. You must partition a drive into one piece or many, and you do it before you format.

If you use a win98 boot disk the option is "fdisk"

 

[csi1189]

trizoy,

so it's possible that i just reinstalled the os over everything i had? what i have now is like a brand new system. there's much more disk space than what there was, and none of what i originally had installed is there anymore. but somehow the orig. os info stuck. (i think that's right). but here's the info you asked for:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

if it means anything, i've been booting the first option of winxp home ed. so the second one is the one i'm hoping can go.

 

[Trizoy]

Well you would see double folders on the c drive two documents and settings two windows folders etc..

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

Try that, if it goes to the old on then try this.


[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

 

[csi1189]

i finally got it. i deleted one of the last 2 lines in the text file, allowing one of the boot os options to say "windows (default)". then i just had to uncheck the box that said "list boot os options for x seconds" so it the default os (the one that worked) just immediatly loaded without the system showing me any other options. thanks for all your help.

 

[csi1189]

one more thing, i am trying to enable hibernation, but i keep gettin an error saying, "...unable to reserve hibernate file: The program cannot access the file because it is being used by another process." I can remember having this problem before, but I can't remember how to fix it. Any suggestions?