How do I format a harddrive with XP operating system, but the operating systems errors to boot?

english plz??

He means that the system gives an error when booting. Make sure the jumper settings on the drive are correct (ie: master/slave/cable select mode). Check your manual, or go to the manufacturer's website, as they keep jumper settings from a very long time ago. Also make sure it is plugged into the corresponding slot on you 80-pin cable (the long-end one is for the motherboard, the short-end one is the master, and the one in the middle is the slave). Then check your bios (hit delete when turning on), and make sure that your hard drive shows up under peripheral devices. If not, change the device to auto select or hard drive. Auto select would be best, but slows boot up a bit. That should all take care of it. Mittens

Your hard drive has to be formatted before you install an operating system. 1) boot to dos 2) type format X:(your drive letter) 3) after formatting is complete, reboot to xp cd and install clean. I am assuming you have your hd partitioned as you want and the 1st set active. This must be done before you format the drive.

Bear49 is correct. You can use the XP system disk or a WIN98 boot floppy and use fdisk. In addition, I might suggest that you create your whole drive as one Primary and Active partition; after you have created the partition, then you must format it with NTFS or FAT32. For NTFS, you must use the XP system disk. After xp will install smoothly.

As an afterthought, if you are going to format FAT32 using the fdisk program in the WIN98 floppy boot disk, I suggest A:\ formatC: /s S makes the partition bootable, very important.