Reformatting Hard Drive

[righty]

I just purchased a new Dell Computer. I removed from my old computer all the files I wanted to. However, I would still like to reformat the hard drive and re-install Windows XP before I give the computer to my niece. I have tried to reformat it through my computer as well as via the C: prompt, I am unable to do this. I have also tried re-installing Windows XP (I have the disk that I used to install it a few years ago) using the XP Cd-Rom but recieved an error message stating the following:

Setup cannot continue because the version of Windows on your computer is newer than the version on the CD.

Any suggestions on how to re-install the old version of XP?

[clroberts]

Try making a boot disk and place format.com and fdisk on the floppy. You can run FDisk and then you should be able to remove the partition and then add a new partition and then format it. Then you can boot with XP and start from scratch.

[glc]

Boot with the XP CD, go into Setup, and remove all partitions before you tell it to install.

[Josh1964]

Conversely you can google and make an ultimatebootcd that has loads of usefull utilities, and has several drive erasers.