problems with windows installation and formating the drives

[wonders_eyes]

look here i cant delete anyof these partitions:
this is wher eim getting instructions to format:
http://www.ehow.com/how_6026_format-hard-drive.html

and it doesnt give me the option to format when i put in the xp cd

heres a screen print, its suposed to let me delete th epartition

what do i do, i want i cleen format and then reinstal xp

any help
thnx

 

[tlarkin]

you can't format your boot partition, windows will not let you, and that is a good thing. Boot off your windows disk and choose the format option when reinstalling, that will wipe and reload.

 

[wonders_eyes]

people are pissing me off cant you ****ing see that the partition that cant be deleted ar formated is NOT the boot drive. d drive is

 

[tlarkin]

people are pissing me off cant you ****ing see that the partition that cant be deleted ar formated is NOT the boot drive. d drive is

you are right clicking on the C drive, first off, and secondly normally i charge to give people advice. Why don't you just google the answer then?

 

[wonders_eyes]

no shit, im right clicking on c drive, nothing happens when double clicking on c drive.
why are u even on here if you charge people for advice... id never give u money for advice

 

[Cromewell]

Calm down. You can't format/delete the partition for system, boot or any partition that has swap file on it. Your C drive is system and D drive is boot so neither partition can be deleted.

 

[codeman0013]

wonders you are gonna piss off the wrong people tlarkin is a good guy and gives a lot of good advice... If you are trying to format the other drive you need to click on it obviously and dont give a screenshot of click on the c drive which of coarse you cannot click on. As much crap as you have had with this computer recently i would just say save files and totally reofrmatt the entire drive and start from scratch..

 

[wonders_eyes]

ok, ive kinda figured that out, but do you know of a way that i can format everything, and then do a clean instal of windows

 

[wonders_eyes]

codeman, ive already said... that i want to format and reinstal,
but im having major probs doing it,
for some reason now ive got xp on c drive, and xp on d drive, and i only want xp on one drive, i cant do it, coz idk how,
and the instructions that people and websites are giving me do not work

 

[Cromewell]

Use the windows installer to delete the partitions on the disk. If you only want to delete 1 partition check the sizes (it will read the size in MB I believe) and then delete the one that is the right size.

Is there any reason you have ~20GB of unallocated (wasted) space?

 

[wonders_eyes]

yes stranglehold, ive tried that

 

[codeman0013]

I would just put the cd in and delete everythign on the hard drive and start from scratch it will ask and just tell it delete and when you get all the parts deleted repartition and start again its not hard... thats about all the help i'm willing to offer after you how treated tlarkin earlier sorry maybe cromewell will help more

 

[wonders_eyes]

i have 20 gigs wasted space(which is now taken up)
becuase some site said that i should delete all partitions then format them all.

 

[wonders_eyes]

lol, no probs codeman

 

[wonders_eyes]

am i right in saying this,

xp setup opens
i choose to instal xp
i choose 'new installation(advanced)'

k, is there any place where it actually gives you to format anything, coz i didnt come accross it

 

[Cromewell]

becuase some site said that i should delete all partitions then format them all.

Ok so you were going to delete them all anyway then? Just put the windows cd in the drive and at the beginning when it asks you were to install, delete all the partitions and either recreate them or make 1 big partition (up to you which you want). The step you are looking for looks like this:
http://www.metrocast.net/~dragontears/InstallXP.jpg

edit: found better image

It's after you press enter to do a new XP install and after accepting the license agreement

 

[wonders_eyes]

is there any place where it says, format c, or something, coz i havnt seen it

 

[wonders_eyes]

ok pips, ima go try it again
thnx

 

[mazanga]

you are doing it wrong

YO DUDE!!!

put u r xp cd in and reboot then run from cd.

it will do its check and then u can delete all u r partitions reformat what u want and away u go.

like i said 5 times already Ymess !!!!!!

 

[wonders_eyes]

ok, people ive just tried it again, and trust me, there was not that screen where it gives you an option to delete or create a partition

it seems to think ive only got windows on one partition which is d
and it asks if i want to repair or to do a new install, but last time when i asked it to do a new install, it installs it on another partition, and i dont want 3 partitions that i cant work with.

so it gives 2 options at that screen,
1 repair
2 new install
it doesnt give an option to delete a partition