Clearing C Drive

My Friends computer does not start up it goes to blue screen with a log onto widows administrator

We know the computer is cactus so we want to clear the hard drive and reinstall everything as we have it all back up. How do we clear the hard drive.

 

If you intend to install Windows 95/98/ME on the drive, you would boot your PC from a bootable floppy disk. To get a 98 boot disk creation program go here on someone else's PC.

http://users.tpg.com.au/adsl5muj/boot98se.exe

You simply run this program with a floppy in the floppy drive and it will create the boot disk. Easy to use and safe. If worried make sure your antivirus program is up to date before downloading it.

Once you have booted with the floppy you can type format c: from the a:\> prompt, to blank C drive.

Other partitions like D, E and so on, can be formatted the same way but type the intended partitions letter instead of c: after typing format, eg format d:

Once the format is complete, then change the drive you are accessing to your CD drive by typing its letter at the a:\> prompt eg d: or e:

Once you have a prompt for your CD drive, type setup and follow the bouncing ball from there.

If you intend installing Windows 2000 or XP, boot the PC from the Windows CD and during the setup process you will get an option to format the drive before copying the new installation to it.

To boot from a CD, you have to have the boot sequence in your BIOS CDROM first. Then you will have to strike a key on your keyboard (i use space bar) when asked to boot from CD. It will say Press any key to boot from CD.... briefly soon after the POST. For more info on changing this in BIOS, ask.

Hope this helps.

 

mine won't even go that far . . . .

Greetings,
my old "cactus" won't even reach blue screen, the HDD light comes on, as does the floppy light, and everything stays that way for as long as i leave it powered.
placing a boot disc doesn't change anything.....
¿ideas?

 

Hi chaosrn,

Before we go too far, this is a different type of problem. Could you please start a new thread (title describing the main problem).

Need more info:
Do you see screens come up (the POST screens)?

Do you get a POST beep?

It does not get to a Windows screen?

Can you boot to a "bootable" floppy disk (eg. a Win98 startup disk)?

...these will help a lot.
Matt