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How to format windows XP without CD?

Discussion in 'Windows XP' started by Hei, 2008/09/21.

  1. 2008/09/21
    Hei

    Hei Inactive Thread Starter

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    Can anyone tech me how to format windows XP without using CD?
     
    Hei,
    #1
  2. 2008/09/21
    Arie

    Arie Administrator Administrator Staff

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    Do you want to format the drive XP is installed on? If you want to do that, you'll need the XP CD to reinstall Windows.
     
    Arie,
    #2

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  4. 2008/09/21
    Hei

    Hei Inactive Thread Starter

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    This mean i can only format those drive that not store window's body?
     
    Hei,
    #3
  5. 2008/09/21
    visionof

    visionof Inactive

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    I have not seen any replies that answer your question
    I am not sure what you wish to do exactly
    Do you have more than one partition ?
    If only one partition you can wipe out the drive
    several ways -
    1) simplest is to start the computer with a windows 98 startup disk
    You can get the creation tools at www.bootdisk.com
    if you have a diskette its easiest
    If not you can copy it onto a cd to boot from
    You may have to go into your bios to change the start order to boot from that device
    I guess it could be done from a flash drive but I have never done it
    Boot from the windows 98 startup disk you made
    ( you can use it in your xp computer)
    at the prompt after it boots up and finishes
    says its a: type "fdisk "
    3 is read the partitions
    4) delete the partition
    after doing it you have to reboot
    If you have to delete more than one partition its basically working backwards from the way the partition were created
    Its a matter of somewhat trial and error
    If one way will not work - it will tell you - take another tack


    second way if you are wiping out the hard drive is to determine the brand / type of hard drive you have and go to the maker for their wipe out utility
    it will wipe out the drive totally writing 1's and o's to destroy everything

    the utility from maxtor/seagate or western digital will be faster than 3rd parties
    If you cannot find it - you can create a free disk at

    www.killdisk.com

    if you need to determine the brand of drive and cannot open or don't want to open your computer case
    then the free belarc advisor http://belarc.com/free_download.html

    may tell you
    aida32 may do too if its an older computer

    http://oldversion.com/program.php?n=aida32

    if you are really stuck many distro's of linux have a tool builit into them to change the format type of a partition - may be a bit complex

    if you only want to do one partition then the easiest way would be to get ahold of win xp disk. It will let you format a partition before asking the serial number
    A previous version of windows ( say 2000) will not you go back from xp to 2000 to do this
    Vista ( i believe) uses a totally different file format system than xp
    I will leave that to other people more expert than myself
    I hope that by the time that i have finished this explanation no one else has solved your problem and i am repeating their words
     
  6. 2008/09/22
    Arie

    Arie Administrator Administrator Staff

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    Since even you aren't sure what the question is, that might be a reason why no one has given a reply answering the question.

    In fact, I asked for clarification on the question.
     
    Arie,
    #5
  7. 2008/09/22
    Arie

    Arie Administrator Administrator Staff

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    If you format you delete all files. So if you format the hard drive holding Windows, you will loose access to Windows. You would need a Windows CD to reinstall Windows.
     
    Arie,
    #6
  8. 2008/09/22
    GERT

    GERT Inactive

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    Of course, if you format, you also erase the system files. It's impossible to format without a cd or other removable drive.
     
    GERT,
    #7

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