Ok, this is kind of off topic, but i've noticed that this forum gets the most and highest quality responses. My question is. I want to format my harddrive. And i've been told that there is a way to do this by reinstalling windows. So I did that but it didn't work. I'm just wondering if you people can help me with this. Just post any method of formatting. Websites will do, thx a bunch. Mat

You have to take the Windows XP installation disk, then put it in the cd drive. Restart the pc go into the BIOS, set first boot device to cd-rom, save and exit the BIOS. After that the pc will boot from the Windows XP cd. The cd will start the installation process, which will have an option later on that will let you format you hard drive. I think there's a program called Wipe Out that will format your drive also. People in the General Hardware or Windows XP forum would give you much better answers on this one i think.

You didn't say which version of Windows you plan on installing or which filing system you wanna use. If you're gonna install WinXP & go with NTFS, what Kevn wrote is correct. XP can also be setup with FAT32 filing system...Win9x/ME can ONLY be setup as FAT. If you wanna format for Win98/ME, pop in your Windows boot floppy (aka startup disk) & bootup...you may have to go into the BIOS like Kevn explained, but this time you want to make sure your 1st boot device is set to floppy. When you boot off the floppy, an options menu will come up...select option #4...at the DOS prompt (A:), type "format C:" & hit ENTER... A:\format C:

Thx guys. But one quick question for Jam... or anyone that wants to comment on the situation. Couldn't i use the windows 98 floppy (which i have from my old comp) to format my drive then just reinstall XP?? That, to me, would be the simplest way to do it. Thx again. Mat.

If your going to be installing XP it's not,if it does work. Since the XP installation comes right after the format when you use the XP cd. So no need to switch disks or anything. And it says Windows XP where it says what OS he has jam, so i was assuming he was talking about XP.

Your win98 bootdisk will only do a fat32 format because it doesn't know anything about NTFS. And the program format.com (or .exe) has to be on it. If you want to install XP better take NTFS as file system. It's fast and it allows smaller clusters on big partitions so you don't loose too much space for small program files (1 file per cluster so 1kb program takes 16kb on a FAT32 partition above 16GB size - the rest stays empty --- and there are lots of small files on Windows, games and other software!)!

Hey Kevn, I wasn't critiquing your answer, I was just adding to it. I saw the XP Home as his OS, but he didn't specify any Windows version in his question. Mat, I suppose if you wanted to do it that way, you could use a Win98 floppy & format as FAT32. You'd then have to reboot, get into the BIOS & set your 1st boot device to CD, then boot off the XP CD...I believe you'll still have the option to format as NTFS before the actual installation begins.