Reformat without boot disk?

iking

iking

New Member
I am about to wipe my PC clean and format it and all I have is the Windows XP PRO disk.

I do not have a boot disk and my floppy drive is not working, can I reformat and boot with the XP disk?

Also, can someone point me to some detailed directions for reformatting? I have not done it in 3 years and do not want to mess anything up.
 
tknick90 said:
How can you have a Windows XP PRO disc that's not a boot disc?
Click to expand...
What he means is that he doesn't have anything (windows Me/9x boot disks, ubuntu, partition magic or whatever) but the windows xp pro cd.

I think it may work with the recovery console... type 'format [drive letter]' and see if it works. Or doing a clean install, after selecting a drive it should prompt you if you want to do a format and what file system to use. Choose NTFS.
 
That's not true. After the POST all the boot drives are checked. That includes floppies, cd/dvds and hard drives. Now in newer systems you can boot from flash or external hdds (using usb connection).
 
iking said:
I am about to wipe my PC clean and format it and all I have is the Windows XP PRO disk.

I do not have a boot disk and my floppy drive is not working, can I reformat and boot with the XP disk?

Also, can someone point me to some detailed directions for reformatting? I have not done it in 3 years and do not want to mess anything up.
Click to expand...

Just boot to your XP CD, when it gets to the harddrive page delete the partition, create a new one and format in NTFS, and the install will start.
 
Yeah, why wouldn't you just boot the disc and format when it asks you? I don't even know what he's asking really.
 
I am about to wipe my PC clean and format it and all I have is the Windows XP PRO disk.
Click to expand...

That's all you need.

I do not have a boot disk and my floppy drive is not working, can I reformat and boot with the XP disk?
Click to expand...

Yes, there is an option before the actual Install that deals with formatting the Drive.

Also, can someone point me to some detailed directions for reformatting? I have not done it in 3 years and do not want to mess anything up.
Click to expand...

There are pretty detailed instructions on-screen during the format/partition phase mentioned above. It's really pretty easy - four formatting options (2 each for FAT and NTFS filesystems) (just do the normal NTFS and you'll be fine). If you want to partition the drive into smaller areas, just remember, 1 GB is 1024 MB, not 1000. I don't foresee any issues you might have with it, but if you have any more specific Q's, just post up.
 
I just read the Xp directions and went into my current bios and made the first boot the CD ROM. I do not have one, it is a DVD but I assume it will all work the same.

I guess now all there is to do is insert the XP disk and do a "clean install", right?
 
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