problem trying to format C drive

[puddlejumper]

Hello,

I have a 4 y/o pc running XP Home that has NOT been taken care of at all. Constantly subjected to improper shutdowns, virtually no regular maintenance and loaded with spyware and lots of shareware that sometimes has been removed improperly etc. This is my sister's machine and before dumping it on me she called the Geek Squad and they didn't even want to mess with it.

So here we go, I pop in a boot disk and reboot. I switch to the C drive and attempt a format but it continually says 'invalid drive... abort, retry, quit'... or something very similar. I try 'dir' at the C prompt and get nothing. Weird.

I boot up normally and go to windows explorer and there it clearly shows the C: drive with everything on it?

I go throught the chkdsk and scandisk and all of the diagnostic tools it tells me to and everything comes out alright? I know this really doesn't mean much but anyway....

Can anyone think of any reason that this is happening and how to get around it? I just want to format the drive and re-install XP and start from scratch.

Thanks for any help,
Rob

[bailey]

if you just boot with the xp cd in the cd drive, it will allow you to do a complete reinstall and format the drive at the same time, do not go into the repaire console but stay with the install, whem asked , install after deleting the currant partition and it will do just that,

but I question why you would do that when xp has the built in restore points that will allow you to restore the system to a date when it was working just fine.

you could also do a repair install that will install all the system files and leave all the data and software intact

[puddlejumper]

Thanks for the reply so quickly. I was not aware of being able to do that from the cd. Of course we all met for Easter dinner yesterday when she gave me the computer she realized she forgot the software. She was going to mail it to me today (we live on opposite sides of the city).

To answer your question about blowing it away as opposed to restoring it is because knowing her, it was probably at it's most stable point the first month she had it and I figured why mess with it and start from a clean slate?

What are your thoughts in regards to the weird message I got about the c drive not existing? Do you forsee any problems with your solution to boot up with the XP cd in?

[Kareeser]

There should be no problems, as windows is not run. The computer reads the CD's files, and then runs the program without starting up Windows (including all that spyware).

All the best, and reply back if you have any concerns

[bailey]

unless of course the hard drive is in fact defective, in which case you will need to replace it.

[puddlejumper]

Thanks to both of you for helping. I am anxious to try out this new way when I receive the XP cd. I will post the results after I try it out.

Cheers

[GaryRouth]

. . . a little extra note here: if the program "GoBack" is installed on the system, there are conditions in which the system drive won't be visible. In such cases, I believe you can disable GoBack temporarily & then the data on the drive can be read. GoBack is now a Norton/Symantec product, and if the machine is a Gateway - I understand that a lot of their models came with GoBack pre-installed.

I think GoBack is unnecessary in a Windows XP system, since the XP System Restore does the same task, and doesn't have as many wierd wrinkles as GoBack (just my personal preference).

If you don't care about the data currently on the drive, just use the diagnostics disk from the hard drive manufacturer's website, zero-write the drive, and then let the Windows XP installation CD partition and format the drive fresh during Setup. You could also try a quick run of the diagnostics first (the "Quick Test") just to make sure the drive itself is probably OK [the "Extended Test" or "Full Test" takes a long time with larger disks, so that's your call - it adds a fair chunk of time to the work].

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[glc]

The reason the bootdisk doesn't see a C drive is probably because the drive is NTFS file system, which a DOS/Win9x/ME bootdisk cannot see. The use of bootdisks to reformat drives is no longer the appropriate way to do it. When you create a bootdisk in XP, it's really a ME bootdisk.

[puddlejumper]

Okay, I'm back a week later after getting the original XP cd and I attempted to boot from the cdrom. Everything looked okay because now before me is a menu asking me if I want to install XP amonst other things.

I click it, start to get a little excited and boom... another error message. This one now states that the software can't be loaded because it is an older version than whats currently installed. I am for sure using the cd that came with it, I'm guessing it thinks this because there have been multiple windows updates installed?

Could someone give me a push in the right direction?

[pillainp]

Boot from the XP CD and press F8 at the EULA to get to the install options screen. From here, if you wish to lose the old installation and install a fresh copy of Windows XP, select the partition on which XP is already installed and tell the system to format and install the new copy to that Partition.
If you wish to lose everything on that system (data on all partitions), delete all the partitions (starting from the last on the list), and the tell XP to create a new partition of say 20 GB, where you can then install XP afresh.

[GaryRouth]

Is the XP CD a "Recovery Disk" or "Restore CD"? Or is it a full-version Windows XP installation disk?

If it's a "Recovery Disk", and you've have backups of all the data you wish to save, and have installation disks to reinstall any software added since the computer's purchase, you can just erase the drive completely (you can use a hard drive utility from the hard disk manufacturer's website to do this), and let the recovery disk repartition, reformat, and reinstall XP and all the original bundled software.

. . . of course, then you have to spend a serious amount of time updating things (installing Service Pack 2 & many many Security Updates since then). Make sure to have an antivirus and firewall running before you reconnect the computer to the Internet (or to a local network).

Curious: does the error message about "older version" seem to refer to the version of Windows, or to the versions of the system-builder's software bundle/ or Recovery program? Is it possible that it's a Recovery Disk, and that the system came originally with Windows 2000? (that was later upgraded to XP?) [. . . since some systems still shipped with Win2000 in XP's early days]. . .

Certainly is an interesting case.
. . . Gary

P.S. --- just saw pillainp's post -- those would likely be your options if your CD is a Windows installation CD, rather than a Recovery Disk.

[puddlejumper]

Hi guys, thanks for responding. I did what pillanp said and it worked like a charm! Thank you for the advice

[pillainp]

You're most welcome. Glad you got the issue resolved.

Have a great day.