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Subject: 
Reinstalling Windows XP & Formating your Hard Drive
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general, lugnet.off-topic.geek
Followup-To: 
lugnet.off-topic.geek
Date: 
Sat, 6 Dec 2003 22:18:22 GMT
Viewed: 
1340 times
  
Today I have the wonderfull pleasure of having to reinstall Windows XP on my laptop.

Don’t ask why, I don’t want to talk about it... =(

In any case, begin that I don’t reinstall Windows that often I had some trouble remembering how and all the stuff that you need to do. I spent a while doing google searches to figure out just what I needed to do. I finally found a few good sites and one file in particular that really summed it up.

Situation

One PC that needs to have windows XP (could be another flavor of Windows) reinstalled. MUST REFORMAT hard drive due to viruses, malicious applications, etc. Only have a Windows XP recovery CD to work with that came with the PC.

Backing-up:

1) Back up anything and everything of value to you. Movies, Mp3’s, documents, e-mails etc.

2) Make a list of what you want to back-up and make sure to go over it several times before reformatting because once you do that, all the information that was on the hard drive will be lost.


Reformatting a Hard Drive:

1) Set your computer to boot from the cd-rom drive. This is done through the BIOS.

a) Restart you machine and get ready to hit an f1 thru f12 key or whatever the screen shows at the bottom to enter the BIOS.

b) Look for the menu that states “boot..” something. Ensure that the first device to boot from is the CD-ROM following by the Hard Drive.

c) Save and exit.

2) Put the XP cd-rom in the drive and restart.

3) Either a blue screen will come up after the BIOS splash screen or it will prompt you if you would like to boot from the cd which you do and then the installation Blue Screen will come up. At the bottom of the screen it says”System is setting up Windows” – this is normal do not worry, you didn’t screw up anything (not yet at least…;-)

4) Press Enter to begin setup

5) Press F8 to agree to license

6) Press Esc to continue installing a “Fresh” Copy of XP

7) On the next screen that comes up you should see a listing of your hard drive with its partition(s). Delete EACH AND EVERY partition by highlighting the partition and pressing D. Press L to confirm the deletion.

8) The only thing that should be left after you are done with step 7 is “Unpartitioned Space” and it should roughly equal the size of your hard drive.

Installing XP:

1) Highlight the “Unpartitioned Space” and Press enter.

2) You will then be asked to choose a file system to reformat your hard drive to. You want to choose NTFS without the “(quickformat)” next to it, It should be the third choice.

3) After that just follow the prompts, and let your computer reformat when its done it will reboot itself and then just hang around for any additional prompts (there should be like 2 or 3 during the installation).

4) It will reboot after its done with the installation and then you will be able to begin using Windows XP.

5) Sit back and enjoy the freedom and stability that is Windows XP.


Hope this help anyone else who might have to go this route. =)

Special thanks to this webiste for the information: http://filebox.vt.edu/users/gschwenz

-Ahui

A&M LWorks





Message has 2 Replies:
  Re: Reinstalling Windows XP & Formating your Hard Drive
 
(...) 4a) Go to (URL) Windows Update> to download all the latest updates. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! Install at least all the critical updates, as these fix vulnerabilities exploited by many worms. (...) ROSCO (21 years ago, 7-Dec-03, to lugnet.off-topic.geek, FTX)
  Re: Reinstalling Windows XP & Formating your Hard Drive
 
(...) "None" and "not too bad, finally", in other words. :) (21 years ago, 9-Dec-03, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)

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