Is there any problem with formatting an XP installation with an old 98 startup disk with CD-ROM support? I have always done this and not found any problems; 1) Pop floppy in drive and select to boot from floppy in BIOS. 2) Reboot 3) When prompted to type I type this direct from the floppy disk cmd prompt: A:\format c: 4) I am then informed that all info will be wiped. 5) I proceed to wipe the disk so its blank 6) I install XP 7) Its fine as far as I can see. 8) A 'mate' of mine is adament that this will leave corrupt files on my computer. 9) I don't believe him but will hold my hands up if anyone can back his arguement up. I did an HND in Computing and several other courses and as far as Im aware, formatting a harddisk using the cmd line I did, will wipe everything on the disk clean!! 10) He said I should always use the XP disk to remove partitions, but from personal experience with the lovely SP2, this isn't stickly true as it left some SP2 registry files on my computer causing issues I'd rather not repeat due to the pain it caused me!!!! Please advise - Im sure you'll say that if it works it works, but any backup would be excellent. Thanks

I've used a Windows 98 boot disk for about 5 XP installations now, doing exactly as you describe to format the hard disk first. I do let XP convert from FAT32 to NTFS during the installation. I also put a copy of smartdrv.exe from Win 98 or ME on the boot disk and run this before starting the install from the i386 folder on the CD-ROM using the winnt.exe command.

that process works okay, but still best to boot with the xp cd and format with it.

Formating with a win98 disk is fine if all you want is Fat32. You wont be able to format to NTFS which is XPs native format. Formating one partition will not effect files on another, so as for leaving corrupted files, it is not possible. Formatting doesn't actually delete anything, it just resets the indexes to the files. The files are then inaccessible without special tools and will get overwritten as new data is added. Partitioning and formatting are two different things. You can remove a partition with Win98 Fdisk. Removing a partition renders everything in that partition inaccessible as well. If you had problems after removing a partition then there is the possibility that you had a virus, possibly in the Master Boot Record. Some viri can survive partitioning and formatting. Having said that, if you are using XP then the Windows XP CD is the right thing to use. The right tool for the job and not a substitute that has no knowledge of Windows XP. Stuart

re: using a WIN98 boot disk to format a harddrive for XP Yes, you can do that and I have done it several times on occastion. However, bear in mind that Win98 is a DOS based system, so your format will be FAT32. XP will operate just fine on FAT32, but: >FAT is a less stable file system; >FAT will not allow as much data storage per harddrive size; >NTFS has far more security options that FAT does not have, double-especially if you ever decide to network; >FAT is now an unsupported file system from M/Soft, making it archaic. Not a good choice. >[unknown factor]: with the new 64 bit AMD CPUs now on the market, and with FAT being 16 bit based, hard to say what the ramifications will be down the road. If you use the XP system disk to first remove all partitions rendering the harddrive as totally raw space, everything is wiped. Or you can fist use a utility like Samsung's Clearhdd to write 0s to the drive thus accomplishing the same thing in seconds. I use it all the time. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime; Then industry pollutes the water and kills all the fish.

Your Mate is correct to the extent that pretty much any standard format operation will leave the original data on the disk. It is possible to recover files etc from a disk that has been formatted in the manner you describe. It isn't that it leaves behind corrupted files, it leaves everything behind. The new file allocation table removes the old roadmap to where things on the disk were stored. Without the roadmap the data is ignored. As new data is written a new index of it's location is created. It is unlikely that any old data could interfere with whatever future use is made of the drive. There are formatting tools available that will basically overwrite zeros 7 to 15 times to all sectors of a disk in theory destroying completely any old data. Killdisk is one I've heard of that is used commercially to wipe systems that are being disposed of into the secondhand market. As to whether to use a 98 bootdisk or the XP CD to do your formatting, if you are operating in NTFS then the 98 bootdisk is unable to perform a format in that system. If you want to delete current partitions and start over with a 'Raw' disk then delpart is a useful tool for this as it can work with either FAT or NTFS. But it still just re-writes the roadmap. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and his wife will never forgive you.

If your existing disk format is NTFS you use fdisk command from the Win 98 boot disk (simply follow instructions) and delete the non-DOS partition it will detect before formatting with format command as above. You can convert to NTFS as part of the setup process using the XP CD-ROM.