problem formating hard drive

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sri

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I had only one partition on my hard disk with windows xp home edition. But I
wanted to install xp professional as a new install instead of upgrade. It
seems like the xp professional cd I have does not contain a boot file, even
when I restart the computer with the cd in it and changed the BIOS settings
to boot from cd, it is not recognizing any boot file. so it kept booting from
hard drive. so I just installed XP professional with the instal option from
the cd which never let me format the drive but installed xp professional on
the same drive. So I ended up with a lot of waste files from previous xp.
There was about 4 gb of memory that was freed because of this, which was
originally allocated for the recovery by the OEM version of previous xp home
edition. I assigned that a drive name E: Now how can I format the whole c:
drive and start afresh. It is not letting me format and install in c: drive.
Instead it just goes ahead and overwrites it. My computer is about 4 years
old and it is the first time I'm trying to format the hard drive 'coz it
became unbareably slow. Any help will be much appreciated
 
Re: problem formating hard drive

This is not an XP newsgroup. It is a Windows 64bit newsgroup, as its name
says. You should use microsoft.public.windowsxp.general instead. This
group discusses issues with Vista x64, Windows Server 64bit editions, XP Pro
x64, and Itananium 64bit editions. Having said that....

Is your XP Pro cd a retail cd? Full edition or Upgrade edition? Where did
you get it?

I think you know this, but just in case; You can only format the C: drive by
booting with the XP cd. You cannot format from Windows.

What is the boot order in your BIOS? It needs to have the cd drive ahead of
the hard drive in order to boot with the cd. What setting did you change to
"boot from cd"?

Since XP Home came preinstalled on your computer do you have a Microsoft XP
Home cd, a restore cd, or none?
"sri" <sri@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2DFBECF7-D4C4-427E-9B89-DBE8B55B292B@microsoft.com...
>I had only one partition on my hard disk with windows xp home edition. But
>I
> wanted to install xp professional as a new install instead of upgrade. It
> seems like the xp professional cd I have does not contain a boot file,
> even
> when I restart the computer with the cd in it and changed the BIOS
> settings
> to boot from cd, it is not recognizing any boot file. so it kept booting
> from
> hard drive. so I just installed XP professional with the instal option
> from
> the cd which never let me format the drive but installed xp professional
> on
> the same drive. So I ended up with a lot of waste files from previous xp.
> There was about 4 gb of memory that was freed because of this, which was
> originally allocated for the recovery by the OEM version of previous xp
> home
> edition. I assigned that a drive name E: Now how can I format the whole c:
> drive and start afresh. It is not letting me format and install in c:
> drive.
> Instead it just goes ahead and overwrites it. My computer is about 4 years
> old and it is the first time I'm trying to format the hard drive 'coz it
> became unbareably slow. Any help will be much appreciated
 
Re: problem formating hard drive

or create a boot floppy and boot from that. And format. Of course, if you
don't have a bootable CD, you are then hosed and have no way to install XP.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/charlie.russel


"Colin Barnhorst" <c.barnhorst@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:7E1260BF-A568-46DF-96D6-DEC86E201827@microsoft.com...
> This is not an XP newsgroup. It is a Windows 64bit newsgroup, as its name
> says. You should use microsoft.public.windowsxp.general instead. This
> group discusses issues with Vista x64, Windows Server 64bit editions, XP
> Pro x64, and Itananium 64bit editions. Having said that....
>
> Is your XP Pro cd a retail cd? Full edition or Upgrade edition? Where
> did you get it?
>
> I think you know this, but just in case; You can only format the C: drive
> by booting with the XP cd. You cannot format from Windows.
>
> What is the boot order in your BIOS? It needs to have the cd drive ahead
> of the hard drive in order to boot with the cd. What setting did you
> change to "boot from cd"?
>
> Since XP Home came preinstalled on your computer do you have a Microsoft
> XP Home cd, a restore cd, or none?
> "sri" <sri@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:2DFBECF7-D4C4-427E-9B89-DBE8B55B292B@microsoft.com...
>>I had only one partition on my hard disk with windows xp home edition. But
>>I
>> wanted to install xp professional as a new install instead of upgrade. It
>> seems like the xp professional cd I have does not contain a boot file,
>> even
>> when I restart the computer with the cd in it and changed the BIOS
>> settings
>> to boot from cd, it is not recognizing any boot file. so it kept booting
>> from
>> hard drive. so I just installed XP professional with the instal option
>> from
>> the cd which never let me format the drive but installed xp professional
>> on
>> the same drive. So I ended up with a lot of waste files from previous xp.
>> There was about 4 gb of memory that was freed because of this, which was
>> originally allocated for the recovery by the OEM version of previous xp
>> home
>> edition. I assigned that a drive name E: Now how can I format the whole
>> c:
>> drive and start afresh. It is not letting me format and install in c:
>> drive.
>> Instead it just goes ahead and overwrites it. My computer is about 4
>> years
>> old and it is the first time I'm trying to format the hard drive 'coz it
>> became unbareably slow. Any help will be much appreciated
>
 
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