reformatting my hard drive

[billybob_81067]

My computer keeps messing up, and I'm wanting to just delete everything and start over fresh once again. How do I go about deleting everything off of the C: drive? Do I just go to the DOS prompt and type del *.* ??? Or do I just shut down my computer and leave the windows XP disk in and reboot it off the cd?

LOL I haven't done anything in DOS in forever and don't even remember if that's the right thing to type or not

Help Me!

Oh and yes I've saved everything I want to save onto c.d.'s so it's all good

Also if it's any help this is a Dell dimension 8100 PC that originally had Windows ME but has the Windows XP upgrade on it.

Any and all help is appreciated



Thanks!

[Ginjiroku]

just do a clean install of windows do boot from the cd.

[MarkM]

Originally posted by Ginjiroku
just do a clean install of windows do boot from the cd.

Not that simple it is a machine with ME that was then made XP by the cheaper route of the upgrade disk.
If you are going to start from scratch you will have to reinstall ME and then install the upgrade XP cd...however knowing pre-installed machines (assuming that is the case here) you will need the PROPER ME install disk...chances are you have a recovery type disk..."if" this isn't the case and you do have a full ME disk then you have to go into the bios and set the boot order to 1st device to cd ....put the ME cd in the drive and restart the machine and follow the prompts....once ME is installed then go back into the bios reset the machine to IDE1 and restart then put the XP upgrade cd in the drive and sit back and watch the magic happen....not having installed ME I do not know if it will give the option of formatting with the NTFS file format, if it won't allow that you are kinda screwed and will have to remain with FAT32...XP "will" work fine with FAT32 but "prefers" NTFS. I frequently use FAT32 formatted disks with XP but only as a start to stripping the data from them prior to a reformat to NTFS

[cletus]

as long as you have an original copy of ME and your upgrade CD you should be fine just running the install off of the XP cd. Boot to the XP cd and go through that process making sure you format it (using NTFS) and not repair it or anything like that. At some point it will prompt you for your ME cd because it cant find an install on your HD. Just put your cd in then and it will verify that you have an OS to upgrade from. You will not need to install ME doing it this way.

[pito189]

I went through this recently and you will NOT get a clean reformat just using the XP boot cd. Use a program called Partition Magic. The program wipes the entire drive. Then you can use the XP cd to reinstall windows.

I had ME too before I got XP about 2 years ago. Talk about an upgrade. ME is the worst version of Windows ever. It crashed/froze 4 to 5 times a week. XP is a godsend after that crap.

[personman]

the dos command should be format c:

[billybob_81067]

Thanks guys!

Thanks everyone...

I got it done and it was much simpler than I imagined it would be. Now my computer is fresh and clean without all those damn programs I never used!

Now I just need to buy a new stick of ram and I'll be good to go for a few more years

Anyone know of a good (cheap) place to buy ram?

[MarkM]

Ok with defference to cletus...but how did you actually fix it...only reason for asking as when the next person has a ME upgraded pc go tits up it would be nice to know what you did to get to a working pc. "I fixed it" isn't really enough info

To a couple of others...some who haven't posted XP is avavilable in several forms...Home and Professional plus they are not always the full versions some are upgrades from previous windows versions...Microsoft also removed the code line that allowed you to retro install Win2000 as the Full NT version even though you bought the regular one, not all disks are equal.

[billybob_81067]

It was really simple

I actually just went through all my dell cd's until I found the windows ME reinstall cd, then I booted off of the cd and it asked me if I wanted to reformat or just install any missing components, so I chose the reformat option.

After I went through the million steps and got it up and running I threw in my dell cd that was labeled "for upgrading your dell computer to windows XP"

This cd had steps on it allowing me to copy a new bios onto a 3.5 floppy, and then I restarted the computer with the floppy in and it replaced the original bios. Then I just slapped in the windows XP upgrade cd and booted off of it and it worked like a charm!

[MarkM]

Ok essentially what I said to do...you were lucky you had the correct disks...so often the already loaded version pc's have a "rescue" disk of sorts but rarely the right one, very very lucky. Interesting what you said about the bios copy thing as that is generally a dual download, first the motherboard makers website and then the flash utility they happen to link to...but interesting all the same....