Story on reformatting Hard Drive

A few weeks ago I posted a question about how to reformat the hard drive of my older computer (a Dell Dimension 8100 from the year 2001). You folks provided me with a lot of good ideas, but after all was said and done, there was one basic issue which was at the bottom of my problems. The following is how I got around the problem (yes I successfully installed the SP1 version of XP Pro overtop the newer version SP2), but I wonder if there isn't a more direct means of accomplishing the task. (would love to learn something). Here is the information:

I changed the BIOS to only boot from the CD. Never boot from the hard drive. That worked as it should, and if I didn't put in the original SP1 CD the computer would not do anything when turned ON.

Then I'd boot from the SP1 CD and the computer did just that. It booted to Windows. Never did it offer the "install" routine.

So I went to the CD drive through Explorer and clicked on "setup.exe ". When the options menu came up, I selected "install Windows ". The program said "Sorry dude, you have a more recent version on the hard drive and there is no way we are going to let you install the SP1 version overtop that" (para phrasing of course).

I could not find a way to delete the Windows hard drive partition through Explorer.

Solution? I went to the Westren digital web page and downloaded a program to reformat hard drives (Data Lifeguard version 11.0). I ran that program from my flash drive and nothing seemed to happen. However, when I rebooted with the XP Pro SP 1 CD, the CD finally initiated the setup routine. I then could delete the Windows partition and reformat the hard drive.

Not entirely sure if there was a simpler way to do this. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks for your patience

Don

 

Actually, I immediately reloaded the SP2. I just had a lot of crud build up in the original installation. I know there are a lot of registry clean up programs out there, but I just like a fresh installation. (One of the programs I could not completely uninstall on the original drive was "Norton antivirus ").

Thanks for the thoughts

Don

 

Please reread my original post. The boot CD would not offer the setup program. Would not. Manually trying to invoke "setup.exe" using windows explorer (after the computer booted from the CD drive) did not work either, because my original CD was from the year 2001 and only had SP1 on it. My computer hard drive was running SP2 (via automatic updates over the years). The CD denied my request to "install windows ". Hence I used the Western Digit software to wipe out the disk drive.

don

 

Look very closely when booting the XP install CD. It asks you to strike any key to boot from the CD. If you miss that opportunity, it will continue to boot from the next available active drive that contains an OS. It sound like you may be missing that message for some reason. Perhaps you're starting from a cold boot and the monitor hasn't warmed up to an active state when that message is flashed. In that case rebooting would allow you to see it.

Just a thought. Please don't take it as any criticism of your operating ability or powers of apperception.

 

Note a problem. I actually removed the hard drive from the BIOS boot sequence so I was certain that I did inadvertantly boot from the hard drive. I also saw the prompt you refer to prior that BIOS setup change.