Need help reformatting my computer!

N

nowayhose

New Member
Hello!

Computer: Dell Dimension 2400
OS: Windows XP Professional

These are the steps I have taken to try and reformat my computer -

I have tryed -

Puting the Windows XP professional install disc in, it says it needs to reboot before installing, so i reboot and nothing happens. I tryed F12 and boot from disc, well, everything was working good, but when it asks me what I want to do (instal, repair, cancel,) I did install but then it would take a second and the computer started making a quiet but odd noise, then a blue screen came up saying it cannot start the install and said that I may need to disable a driver if listed - and at the bottom it said technical details or something then said

***STOP: 0x0000008E (0xc0000006, 0x808c8D95, 0xF8C25A10,0x00000000)

And this one guy on another forum said it may be because of faulty ram and that I may have to disable a ram driver or something (cant remember exact words) but I do not know how to do that. Also, I tryed running msconfig then disabling all my drivers and it disabled all but 2 (remote procedure call or something) but it still didnt work. and I searched up for that driver in search but nothing came up. Can anyone help? Thankyou so much!!!!!!
 
Upon booting from any XP full installation disk and choosing the press enter to install option you should see a screen asking which drive/partition you want to install Windows onto. The installer will detect the drives and one or more partitions on the one or more drives installed. At that time you can choose the "L" option to delete the current primary partition Windows is already installed on.

From there you then create a new partition and the installer will then create and format it. The setup files are later copied onto the new partition. Once the copying of the installation files is completed you will be prompted to press the enter to restart the system. Upon the reboot the installation process will then begin. It isn't a difficult task.
 
have you a other pc close to you where you could put that HD into? (as slave) because then you could start the windows setup, and just delete the partitions of the Dell HD, and then put it back into your Dell to reinstal windows. I dont say you have to do that.. its just an option wich im pretty certain of that it would work :)
 
If slaved in a working case you could easily use the disk management tool in computer management without even needing the installation disk. Another simple option is to use the Linux Gnome Partition Editor known as GPart 0.1h found at http://tucows.com/preview/8292

After burning the iso image to a cd-r you would simply boot off of that to run the program. It is far easier to remove any and all partitions off of any drive where you are seeing the "attempted_write_to_readonly_memory" type error. The installer is caught in a snag by a write protected installation when you were trying to reinstall over the existing copy of Windows. In your case you would have to delete the current installation and the installation would proceed from that point on.

You could probably save the current partition by using the installer rather then any partitioning tool. Have you backed up any important files off of the drive?
 
Hey guys, thanks for the replys - I will try some of the suggestions and let you know how it goes.

One thing though, after pressing enter to install windows, I know I am supposed to see a list of partions, I have reformatted my computer before, but it doesn't even get to that screen, before it gets there it says there is an error and I may need to disable a drive or "try a different video driver"...
 
It sounds like your HDD is no good.... The clue comes from it making wierd noises. The only thing in your comp that would do that is the HDD. Try replacing it and see what happens.
 
SirKenin said:
It sounds like your HDD is no good.... The clue comes from it making wierd noises. The only thing in your comp that would do that is the HDD. Try replacing it and see what happens.
Click to expand...

I agree, and if it isnt that, then try taking one or other of your sticks of RAM out. Dont take it to someone to reformat it, that is just a way to waste money.
 
nowayhose said:
Hey guys, thanks for the replys - I will try some of the suggestions and let you know how it goes.

One thing though, after pressing enter to install windows, I know I am supposed to see a list of partions, I have reformatted my computer before, but it doesn't even get to that screen, before it gets there it says there is an error and I may need to disable a drive or "try a different video driver"...
Click to expand...

Give the GPart utility a try there to see if it clearly indicates the drive. That will tell you right away if the drive is working properly. Another thought is the drive cable itself may have become dried out and inflexible. Is that an ide or SATA drive there?
 
Hey Guys, thankyou so much for the support! I really don't want to go to a computer shop, but if I have to, all I will do is go in and offer him like 10 bucks to do it, no more. I live in a small town in Wisconsin so I know the dude doesn't get a whole lot of business.

Also, I downloaded the thing from http://tucows.com/preview/8292
and I dont know what the heck to do,
The folder name is gpart-0.1h
There are just a bunch of text files in it and "MAN" files in it. Confusing, anyone?
 
Ok do you have a cd writer? You can grab a free version of BurnOn that will take and the entire iso image onto a cd. From there you boot from that disk just like you would the XP cd. It will come up to a user friendly desktop which is almost self explaining with how it is layed for convenience. You can get BurnOn at http://www.download.com/BurnOn-CD-DVD/3000-2646-10434785.html?part=dl-BurnOnCDD&subj=dl&tag=button

When you have BurnOn installed browse to the folder where the iso image is. You choose the drive used for burning cd-rs and click on the record button to see work fast. That will readily burn the GPart disk image you just downloaded. From there simply boot the system with it and see it shows your drive. Look over at the right side of the main explorer bar.
 
Sounds great! I understand everything except for the ISO image. I have a cd burner but I only have CD-R's (700mb or 80min of music) will those work? I looked in the files from gpart-0.1h and i didnt see any ISO file types - do I just burn the whole folder to a cd?
 
nowayhose said:
Just downloaded burnon.... It says that there are no .ISO files in the gpart-0.1h folder....?
Click to expand...

Heh. You're wasting your time. ;) Windows XP install partitions the HDD and formats it. Just use that. All gpart does is try and guess what kind of partition you have. Well. Let me think about this one for a second. Ummm. NTFS? *ding ding ding*. :D Seeing as how the whole world knows that XP formats the drive NTFS, that won't tell you anything new. If it can't write to the drive and the drive is making wierd sounds, it's pretty obvious that the drive is toast. To make sure, put the end of a flat head screwdriver on the side of the drive and stick the handle in your ear. It acts like a stethoscope. You'll know in a hurry if your drive is bad or not (but I bet it is).
 
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nowayhose said:
Just downloaded burnon.... It says that there are no .ISO files in the gpart-0.1h folder....?
Click to expand...

The complete download is what is burned to disk. That is the GParted-livecd-0.2.5-5.iso file there. It's not a folder. It's a complete disk image that BurnOn writes to a cd.
 
Oh, I forgot to add something.. While I think of it I'll mention it.. Gpart checks the partition table to see if it is still good. That's only useful if you wanted to save a harddrive that had information on it though, and the makers of Gpart tell you on their website that if Gpart finds inconsistencies, you're pretty much on your own. Basically what I'm saying is what I said to you before. You're wasting your time screwing around with it. It has it's applications, but this isn't one of them.
 
Ok... I am really confused. Can anyone tell me how to Re-Format my computer? Or tell me how to disable the drivers that I listed?
 
You'll be glad to know the latest GParted is out in either zip or iso files found at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gparted/gparted-livecd-0.3.1-1.iso?download

Once the iso image is burned to disk you boot from that just as you would the XP installation disk. But instead of going through the options to get to the "L" for delete and then "D" to delete the chosen partition you simply highlight the drive detected. The link for hard drives is on the upper right hand side of the desktop like gui GPart uses. You then click on the delete button seen on the explorer bar and then the "apply" button to see a scrolling bar going side to side in under a minute's time. Your partition is then removed. The partition and all files are gone for good. It's about the easiest method available.
 
Reformatting is simple. There is the long, drawn out way to do it that doesn't get you anywhere but confused and frustrated (you've seen that already), and then there's the XP way of doing it. Boot from your CD. Tell it to select the partition you want to install on. Delete the old partition, create a new one and do a quick format. You will be reinstalling in minutes.
 
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