I put my windows installation cd in and wanted to wipe my C: clean.. I formatted the drive then rebooted and I came back to the same screen like nothing had changed.. anyways I went to format again and it said my C: was corrupt.. I don't have a floppy drive so a bootdisk is out of the question.. how can i completely delete the partition and if needed I can manually go into the cd and start the install (possible options?).. any help?

Download a good boot CD from here or one of many other places on the Internet. This CD will have the tools to check the drive and manually format it or repair the boot sector or whatever else needs to be done. Jimi_l

Trying my link I noticed a problem. Make sure you get the link I intended and not one of the ad/sponsor links that persistantly pops up all over the post. It should bring yo to the ultimate boot cd page and not E-bay or mp3downloading.net or covad etc etc

woodrow, Your only option is to boot from the CD, is your Compaq Recovery Disk gone? Barts way to create bootable cd-roms (Bootable Windows XP installation CD-Rom) http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/#wxp How to perform XP Clean Install http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html