Best way to reformat C (Xp drive)

[jimster1982]

Hi Friends,

I'm having trouble re-formatting my C partition which holds XP.

I want to format so i can reinstall XP from scratch due to difficulties and where ever i try to wipe from (even linux)it seems to be protected.

Any ideas? Sure it will be a quick solution!

the jimster!

 

[YellowOnline]

Can't you boot from the WinXP CD and format/reinstall from there? If not: use a bootdisk to get to a prompt.

Peace,

Yellow

 

[bcastner]

There might be a protected partition on the disk. Go to the manufacturer's web site and download the free utility and diagnostic software for the drive. Use that to do a destructive low-level format first on the drive. Then use the XP CD to partition and format the disk for the OS.

In the alternative, it is possible a partition manager program can remove the partitions. FDISK has some capability to remove non-DOS partitions. Download and create a Win98SE boot disk with fdisk:

http://www.24by7.ca/files/boot98se.exe

A good freeware partition editor:

http://www.ranish.com/part/

 

[linney]

Is it something like this, or do you have any error message displayed?

XP PRO/FDISK Problem.
thread779-850607