Formatting my Hard Drive in XP

Ok, I know someone here will be able to help me....

I need to re-format my Hard Drive but I'm quite new to this kinda thing on XP, on 98 I just restarted in DOS and told it to format... piece of cake... I'm sure that it's really easy on XP but I just can't sus it out.

Could someone please let me know exactly how to get it so that my hard disk and all but completely blank so I can start again... I'm fine with the set up, i just can't get back to the beginning!

Please help.....

(Wow, this post makes me sound completely computer illiterate.... don't be afraid to use big words, I'm not as dumb as this sounds... I hope)

 

format using DEBUG

DEBUG command may help you erase your HD and all the existing partitions. here's how:

boot to XP cd. go to recovery console and type there DEBUG.
type this:

-F 220 L1000 0 (ENTER)

-A CS: 100 (ENTER)

xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 (ENTER)

xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 (ENTER)

xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 (ENTER)

xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 (ENTER) <--- "80" for hd1, "81" for hd2 >

xxxx:010C INT 13 (ENTER)

xxxx:010E INT 20 (ENTER)

xxxx:0110 (ENTER) <-------BLANK LINE "VERY IMPORTANT" >

-G (ENTER)

Program terminated normally

- (CTRL)-(ALT)-(DEL) to reboot system

-------------------------------------------

Now you have to f-disk and format and reinstall the operating system.

 

iridium - what's the advantage of that over just using the options from the CD?

You'd need to use the CD to format anyway and with a clean install of XP, you get the option to remove and create partitions so no need for fdisk to do the same job.