Need to format my hard drive...

[RyanSpaulding]

Hey guys, I'm trying to do a clean install on an old machine that just had a bunch of crap on it. How do I completely wipe my system drive? I need EVERYTHING off...using the Windows XP cd just reinstalled it and kept all files there. I cant format the system drive from Windows either.

 

How do I absolutely wipe my hard drive so that I can start anew? I want nothing left on there except a clean install of Windows.

 

P.S. There is no floppy boot disk

[BrianKitts]

windows xp is a bootable cd, to do a fresh install make sure your bios is set to cdrom for primary boot device and put your windows cd in the rom and bootup. It'll come up and say press anykey to boot from cd.

 

which will put you into the initial windows setup screen. one of the first things you do is to select what partition you want to install on. you can delete old ones create new ones etc. and then once you select what partition to install on, windows will ask you about formatiing the partition. select yes and pick your fileformat (most likely NTFS).

 

I would suggest starting over.... if you try moving stuff around, making a partitio n (partition magic, etc..), moving files, wiping the partition with the olds files etc, you'll probably end up screwing stuff up if you don't really know what's what. and it would proabably take more time than the hour it would to start from scratch.

 

hope this helps for ya!