How to reformat harddrive

I have installed XP PRO and it did not install clean. It picked up some of the previous OS which was XP Home. I was not trying to upgrade but get a clean install. I did not select the upgrade option, I selected the full install.

I had two partitions and deleted one of them which was the HP Recovery Partition. It would not let me delete 'C' because it had already put some temp files on it. I could not resize it to take advantage of my complete harddrive.

How do I get it to see the harddrive as empty and clean, so that it does not find anything from the previous OS.

Daniel

 

I have followed the instructions and when I get to the page to select the partition it will not let me delete drive 'C'. I have done this twice and I wind up the same way. The other partition that I deleted is now unused space.

When I tried to delete 'C' and reformat to use all the space available, it refuses because it has already put some temp files on 'C'.

Daniel

 

dan239 and PeteC,

Another (simpler?) way might be to boot from a floppy to DOS (which you can do no matter what OS is on the HDD) and run fdisk to delete the old unwanted partition(s).

Reboot to the XP CD.

No need to format. XP installation should see a pristine disk and create a new partition (ntfs or fat32) using the whole HDD and format it. Not so many decisions, so less chance for error?

 

Just to let you know that I created a bootdisk and reformatted the harddrive. Then I installed XP PRO and got a clean install without any problems and only one partition.

Thanks for your help

Daniel

 

Pete

Glad to post back and give credit where credit is due. I could have never done this clean install without the good information I received here.

Maybe someday I will learn enough to help someone else and repay the kindness of you all. It is so nice of everyone here to give of their time to help those of us when we need it.

It is not that I am computer illiterate, having been a programmer about 35 years ago, but things today are so different. I have not keep up with the technology and even put off buying a home computer until about three and a half years ago.

Just to give you an idea of how things have changed in 35 years, we were running an IBM Model 30 computer with a total of 96K of memory. Yes, I do mean K or 1024 bytes. We ran 3 partitions and did our programming in 36K. This is how much space we had to assemble programs as well as run production jobs. This was an accounting department and most of what we did was accounting programs.

We input our data to IBM cards and loaded it to tape. Most jobs were run tape to tape until disk drives came in a little later.

Just thought you might find that interesting.

Thanks again

Daniel

 

Dan - FWIW, you can get back up to speed fairly quickly if you want to. Changes, surely. But mostly toward simpler.

My first computing (1963)
- write flow chart
- code it into Fortran
- punch said code onto cards
- punch a data stack onto more cards
- feed card stacks to the beast
- a few minutes later, get some printed output

At one point, we lost a huge amount of archived data when termites ate their way into the stacks of cards from the bottom and we didn't notice until they got so near the top that the stack fell in on itself.

 

Newt

Sounds like some of my experiences. I was writing in ALC [Assembly Language Coding, for those of you that might not know] which we punched into cards and feed it to the beast like you said.

I really do not wish to become a computer expert, if there is such a thing, but I hate not knowing how to do something when I need to. I have gotten a real education recently as a result of purchasing a new computer a trying to fix everything that HP messed up and then finally giving up and installing XP Pro.

I am very pleased with my clean install of XP Pro and I am using about 1/2 of the harddrive space that was being used with XP Home and all of HP's junk that they added. I really did not know that it was wasting that much. I went from somewhere between 7 and 8 Gig, down to 3.32 Gig.

Daniel

 

Do I dare show my age and tell you my first so called computer.
Anyone remember the Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81. My brother and I thought we were so clever being able to copy the basic programing booklet that came with it and see little dots fly around the screen. (1980) Then of course came the commodor 64. I still remember first geting married and my husband had one. He had this game that even today we both still remember the sounds it made. Ting Ting Ting Ting Ting Ting Ting Ting Ting as little soldiers clashed swords. Then the amiga playing the Lemmins.
Oh what fun that was.

By the way Im not that old I was only 11 when the ZX came out.
Stitch