Looking to do a clean install of XP. Not to familiar so bear with me. I currently have XP on my machine and want to blow away everything and then do a clean install. I pop the cd in the drive and select install XP, enter key blah blah. I get to the point where I reach my existing partition on C: with my current XP version on it. I go to delete it and it says it can't cause it has setup files on it. Where do I go from here? Can I just go to my DOS prompt and format c: and then try booting from the disk? Can somebody point me to a step by step layout of this procedure so I can print it out and follow through it.

Go into bios and set the first boot device to cd and put the cd in the drive and start the computer. When you see the press any key to boot to cd press quickly or you will miss it. Once it boots to the cd then you can do the requested operations. Girls just wanna have fun! Im out to help them all I can!

New/Clean Install 1=Set Bios to boot from CD/ROM 2=Place the OS/CD in the CD/ROM drive and Re-Boot 3=Watch for the prompt to "press any key to boot from CD/ROM" Press ASAP 4=windows Setup (Loads Files) 5=To setup XP now press "enter" 6=Press F8 for license 7=To continue installing a fresh copy of windows without repairing press "ESC" 8=For a new or unpartitioned drive press"C" 9=For a drive that has partitions or any data on it, you should press "D" to delete the partition and start out with a clean drive. 10=Press "enter" 11=You will be prompted again, press "L" , Now you are ready to partition and format 12=Press "C" 13=To create a new partition, enter a size below and press "Enter" (Note=You can create more than one partition here or press "Enter" to utilize the entire drive 14=To setup windows on the selected partition press "enter" 15=Select format NTFS with quick option, (Should be the top selection) 16=Press "enter' 17=Wait for format to complete 18=Computer will start copying files to the installation folders (this may take several minutes) 19=Computer will re-boot, do not press any key to boot from CD/ROM when prompted. 20=follow the on-screen instructions to complete loading windows.

At step 9 it does not allow me to delete partition "Temp setup files are on partition"?

yes you can boot to dos use a win 98 boot disk www.bookdisk.com type format c: as you said then once finished. boot from disk as before and install xp. i think you were just making sure you could format your hd and still boot from cd after right? yes you can Athlon xp 2500+ @2.17 pc 3200 512mb ram radeon 9200se win xp home oem

Pretty strange, I have never seen that one before, if Simon's suggestion does not work correctly you could always try an FDISK at the A prompt and try to delete the partition. I have had to use DELPART at times when nothing else would work, it's a little awkward to figure out but it does work. http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm

If you got that message at step nine, then you are not booted to the cd. Be sure you pressed a key and it booted to the cd and not the harddrive. Girls just wanna have fun! Im out to help them all I can!