Due to various viruses and a general slow-down of my system, I'm going to attempt a reformat of my hard drive and completely reinstall Windows XP Pro. I'm going to outline my procedures below, but would appreciate it if anyone who has experience with this could verify this process I'm describing. I've never done this before, and I'm a little nervous. Here goes: I've backed up all data I wish to keep. I have a 6-disk bootable XP Pro startup disk set that I downloaded from Microsoft's website, but I'm thinking that it would be easier (perhaps) to simply boot from the XP Pro CD which is bootable. I have the ability to boot from CD-ROM, so I could presumably change my BIOS boot sequence settings to boot from the CD first and use the Windows XP Pro CD to boot from. Let's assume that I will proceed using the XP Pro CD as my boot disk. I'm assuming that when booting from the CD, I will be greeted with an a> (A prompt). IS THIS CORRECT? Since I don't *think* I have to worry about repartioning (I only want one partition), at the a> I will simply type FORMAT C: and begin the reformat. (I will not use FDISK or concern myself with partitions.) CAN SOMEONE CLARIFY WHY SOME PEOPLE SAY TO TYPE "FORMAT C:/S" I'm pretty sure simply typing FORMAT C: will do what I'm wanting to do. After the drive has been formatted, WHAT SHOULD I DO? Since my XP Pro CD is already in the drive, should I type cd\e: (with e: being my CD drive)? And then type SETUP? CAN ANYBODY CLARIFY THE PROCEDURE TO ACCESS THE XP SETUP FILES ON THE CD AFTER I FORMAT THE HARD DRIVE? From here on out I'm assuming it's basically a matter of following the setup directions. I'm planning on choosing NTFS file system. Any suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks,

DO boot from the xp cd. You WON'T get a dos prompt. BUT, it will be very EASY. Just follow the instructions. XP will format your drive as part of the process and you will have the opportunity to choose FAT or NTFS. Choose to delete the current partition and then reformat and create the new partition. CALM DOWN, you CAN do this. Seriously, it's not difficult. Let us know how you make out and post again if you have problems.

jase, echo! It's a walk in the park. Winxp does it all for you. Don't panic, watch the menus, most you have to do is enter your cd key# & set time zone;)

Or u could use patition magic 7.0 easy ?

So let me get this straight... There is NO advantage to running FORMAT C: and doing a wipeout of my harddrive BEFORE I reinstall the XP Pro OS from the CD, because during the new clean install of XP Pro it will essentially run the FORMAT C: command anyway? If that's the case, you all are right--this couldn't be any easier. But just to satisfy my curiosity, IS there an advantage to starting a clean install from an already wiped and reformatted hard drive? Thanks much,

Jase, no advantage that I know of. You're correct, the way we described it above will essentially run "format c: /s". Go for it !!

You have to download delpart from http://www.rustysmith.com/delpart.htm . I tried everything to format my hard drive with NTFS but it won't get rid of everything till you kill the partion. Make a boot 3.5 disk with XP then install delpart on it. Start your computer with this boot disk and run the delpart program. Turn off your computer and restart with your XP CD in place and it should walk you thought the partion, format and reinstall of XP. If you are not sure your computer will boot to your CD ROM then download the 6 disk set boot disks for XP from Microsoft and have them ready. This worked for me.