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reformatting hard drive
Name: PPARKER23 Date: December 9, 2008 at 17:38:58 Pacific OS: Microsoft Windows XP Medi CPU/Ram: 2.00 GB of RAM Product: Dell / XPS 400
Comment:
I'm looking to reformat my hard drive. I used to have step by step but lost them and i cannot find any help online (google, microsoft, dell, ect..) I have a dell xps 400 that came with one disk for the OS and have no idea where to begin. Any help would be greatly appreciated. If i need to post any more system info or anything else let me know as i will be checking back every 15 mins. lol!
Name: DAVEINCAPS Date: December 9, 2008 at 20:56:46 Pacific
Reply:
With XP you can boot up with the XP cd. When it gets to the setup menu, hit ENTER to 'set up windows XP now'. Then F8 to accept the licensing agrement. Then 'delete the selected partition'--probably the one showing an NTFS partition.
I didn't go any further because I didn't want to delete my partition but after that you may need to reboot. Then startup again with the cd to do a reinstallation.
If you have a restore disk you may be able to boot from it and have it overwrite the existing installation.
(Yes this is probably one of those posts that belongs in the XP forum since the formatting procedure is different for dos and XP on NFTS. With XP on FAT32 you can just use an ME or 98 bootdisk. But the specs here indicate a newer system likely on a large NTFS drive.)
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