Hi, I got a small question to ask. It seems kinda stupid but I'm using win xp and I dunno how to re-start my pc in MS-DOS mode! Actually I wannna re-start in ms-dos so that i can reformat my pc. So can u help me out here? thanks!

make a dos boot disc, get a floppy disc and go to the a: icon in my computer right click, click on format, then check the box that says create msdos startup disc. follow thru with it, next go to www.killdisk.com, download the kill disk software, unzip it and drag it to your a: in my computer, then restart your pc... hit the f1 button simultaneously when your pc begins to restart and you will go into bios, go to the boot tab, and go down to boot priority, move either the floppy drive or removable devices to the top by using the - and + keys beside backspace.. hit f10 to save changes and exit, then your pc will restart. you will start up in dos mode, in the a: prompt type killdisk, highlight the c: and follow the instructions to kill the disk, it sounds extreme but kill is format. then after it finishes take out the floppy disk, put in the 1st cd and hit ctrl alt delete, buttons at the same time... your computer should restart and recreate the partition and then it will install the operating system, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT DISKS before you delete your pc, feel free to email me I have already helped one person with this problem so it does work no matter what anyone tells you. Im not sure what operating system you are wanting to install but this is the way you go into dos mode

by the way... you have to get killdisk for it to work, dos does not operate like the dos we are all used to in winxp... you have to run kill disk in order to format. If you just startup in dos mode you wont even be able to change directory to c:

To format my system I use the winXP disk. Set bios to initially boot off of cd drive containing the winXP cd. There is an option during setup of winxp to format drives in different formats. Works brilliantly and no need for dos.

You can not restart XP in DOS mode as there is no DOS whatsoever in XP or W2K or NT, it is emulated, it is actually Command Line. You have the XP CD and/or the boot diskette set, run the installation and various options are there, REPAIR, UPGRADE, FORMAT, DELETE/CREATE PARTITIONS etcetc and choice of NTFS/FAT32. DOS does not support NTFS natively. Admittedly XP does have an MSDOS boot floppy creator, but it is only to start PC, includes no tools to do anything except read the drives/partitions!

What an involved instruction... use a 98 boot disk and format c: or do as x86 suggests.

I used a win98 startup disk to run msdos. However i could not find my drives because they are NTFS. I downloaded and ran "DOS NTFS" and it emulated the NTFS drives and i could see the drives and files and folders. but i can not write into the drives or delete any file. Can anyone help me with this? How can I delete a file from MS-DOS Running Windows XP Pro on NTFS drive?