Reinstall Windows XP Home problem..

[bradford_snowboarder]

My system was full of garbage, and some software was crashing.

Rather than uninstall each piece of software to see if it solved the problem, I thought I'd do what I used to do with Win 98 and boot from the original CD.

In W98, this used to clear all my old data and leave me with a clean hard drive, with very little memory used up.

When I did this with Win XP, I found that when it had rebooted, all my original data was still on the hard drive.

Is there a way of completely wiping my hard drive, so that I can start with what is effectively a brand new computer?

Thanks

[Sixpack]

Hello,
You should be able to put in your xp cd and choose new installation or you could do it by booting to a 98 startup disc and running fdisc.

[perkin]

boot from cd and choose new or (fresh installation) installation, do not choose R installation (for repair) from the cd os or recovery disk system, doing so, your data will be deleted and you will have a new re-formatted disk to star working from a clean hard disk, otherwise you will have to format the hard disk ( before do this be sure to do it, Format c

[Panama Red]

Originally Posted by bradford_snowboarder Is there a way of completely wiping my hard drive, so that I can start with what is effectively a brand new computer? Thanks

Follow the same method as you just did but when you get to the point where it finds the existing XP install and offers the option to repair it, choose a fresh install. Just be sure to Delete the existing partition(s) before you do the fresh install. The choose Full Format prior to the fresh install.

[ITlover]

Originally Posted by bradford_snowboarder My system was full of garbage, and some software was crashing. Rather than uninstall each piece of software to see if it solved the problem, I thought I'd do what I used to do with Win 98 and boot from the original CD. In W98, this used to clear all my old data and leave me with a clean hard drive, with very little memory used up. When I did this with Win XP, I found that when it had rebooted, all my original data was still on the hard drive. Is there a way of completely wiping my hard drive, so that I can start with what is effectively a brand new computer? Thanks

Well, if you want to completely remove data from your HDD, then instead of using Win98 CD, you can simply use the disk management utility that is available in Win XP OS.

My Compt----> (RC)-----> Manage------> Disk Managment.

After clicking on Disk Management ,you will see an image of your HDD on the Right Side of the Window and you can right-click on the individual partitions and format them with FAT32.
This will delete your data in the HDD, and then you can simply insert WinXP CD and start installing it in the partition of your choice.

Or you can simply format the data by right-click on the partitions that you see in Windows Explorer window which will delete the data.

Please note that you cannot format the partition where your OS is already installed either through disk management utility or by right clicking individual partitions in Windows Explorer.

Hope this helps,

[glc]

Where are we going here? This is a 3 year old thread.

[ITlover]

Yes it dates back to 2003, but these kinds of problems can be useful .