got a serious virus on my Dell Inspiron 1520, running Window xp. I want to clean hard drive but cannot get a dos prompt to format hard drive. Help!!!!!!!!!
Formatting the hard drive is normally done during the early stages of the OS installation. You cannot format the drive while Windows is running. Be aware that formatting is a destructive process that will remove all data on the drive.
Boot from your Windows XP system disk that came with the system and select R to get to the recovery console (DOS). http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/rep...
You should download your NIC drivers to a CD before you start because you will not be able to get it connected to the internet without them.
P.S. I hope you have all of your pictures, music and important files backed up before you start.
To format your hard drive
1) Insert the Windows installation CD into the CD drive. Make sure that there are no other disks in the computer, and restart.
2. At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press the Enter key to set up Windows.
3) Press the C key to continue setup.
4)Press the F8 key to agree to the license.
5) Press the C key to create a partition.
8) Enter the size of the partition, or just press the Enter key to use maximum size.
7) Select the "New" option, and press the Enter key.
8) Select NTFS or FAT file system
9) Follow the prompts format the hard drive in Windows XP continue the Windows installation.But after formatting you lost all the data then you can recover your formatted data with the help of Stellar windows data recovery software. It can recover data from formatted, lost or deleted from any hard drives.