I’m formating my compaq desktop. I was to reinstall windows XP , get rid of the “recovery partition” and put in another one with windows and my important programs like adaware on it. Please tell me how to do this using a windows XP cd. Thanks!
I’m a Bit lost, You’re Formating at the Moment? or your making a Recovery Partion? Or Do you want to make one for future use?
Windows 2000 - Nutter X-Box’s and PC Guru
I think you’d better Edit that one Since it makes as Much Sence as one of my Posts, or Less?
I want to format ASAP. I want to know how to do it. I want to know how to remove the retarded partition from my pc and I want to know how to add another one to replace it.
His post makes perfect sense, if you’d bothered to read it.
Not sure if they will work for you, but the Wipe and Zap programs from this page will write zeroes to the first few dozen sectors, including the partition table, deleting them. I used them once, but I’d save them for a last resort, because they’re weird and confusing.
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Despite some stupid things I’ve said in other tech help threads, I know I what I’m doing as I’ve been reformatting computers with XP regularly during my co-op internship this semester.
Sin, I still don’t understand your situation but perhaps these suggestions may help:
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Put your XP in your drive and restart your computer and make it read off the CD before XP starts (change the BIOS settings to read the CD first).
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You will get to a blue screen that shows your partitions. Delete all of them, then chose the option to install XP on the unpartitioned space.
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There must be an option of this screen for your specific scenario. Maybe something like “Load Partition” or something similar.
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From there, you just need to follow the on screen instructions to install XP.
There’s a different procedure if you happen to have a “boot disk”, where you can use the “fdisk” command in DOS to manually delete all the partitions on your hard drive and maybe there’s another option here as well.
I’m going to be talking to my co-op administrator (he’s the supervisor of the college’s lab and really knows his stuff) tomorrow and I will ask him about your situation Sin, if you don’t find a solution by then.
First get a program to backup your Windows & Office settings and most important documents. There are lots of these programs for you to choose, I’ll give a suggestion for one when I get back home.
Then, you MUST absolutely get this program: Slipstreamer 1.0. This program burns a CD with Windows XP and SP2 together. They’ll also be installed together, saving you a lot of time. There is a beta version of Slipstreamer 2, but since it’s beta, it may contains bugs and bugs are not fun when it comes to backupping your system.
edit: and then you follow the instructions on Bahamut’s post, it’ll eventually get you to a screen where you’ll format your HD.
Pierson, simply erasing the 0 track does not format your machine. It’s literally the ‘quick’ formatting you could do without those programs. It can lead to some problems if you’re going to reinstall your system.
I have everything I want backed up backed up. I will delete the partition as suggested by Xero. My question is now will reinstalling windows format everything or will I have the format option available to me when I load XP at the start? I don’t quite understand the formating process
Once you delete all of the partitions on the drive, you will just have “unpartitioned space” on your drive equal to the size of your hard drive. When you go to install windows xp on the unpartitioned space, windows will force you to format the space. Choose NTFS, the windows loader will format the space for you and immediately begin installing windows. The process could not be simpler really.
On the other hand, I would not reccomend creating only one partition with windows on it. The windows loader will give you the option yourself to split the unpartitioned space into partitions yourself. Optimally, depending on the size of your drive, you might want to create up to three partitions. One, around 3 to 4 GB for windows, and then a separate partition for programs and another for backup purposes. That way, if you ever have to reformat windows, using a backup program, you might only need to format the windows partition, and you won’t have to reinstall all of your programs. Or even if you want to wipe out windows AND the programs, you can still safely keep up the backup partition. When you format, you’re only formatting one partition at a time, so creating multiple partitions can be useful. You can always alter the size of the partitions with a program like PartitionMagic as well, so don’t fret too much over the size of the partitions you make.
Windows will fit on a 4 gb partition?
Most definitely.
The following is off Microsoft’s site:
Here’s What You Need to Use Windows XP Professional
• 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
- Actual requirements will vary based on your system configuration and the applications and features you choose to install. Additional available hard disk space may be required if you are installing over a network.
A 3GB patition is double what they recommend so I believe it will be more than adequate to hold all the neccessary Windows XP system files.
The site the information came from is here.
Thanks guys!
Nothing to do with the thread, just a general question…Is it possible to give windows a swap partition?
No problem, I’m just happy I finally gave some tech advice that was actually useful for a change :hahaha; .
Dev: I’ll hand that question over to Zep because I’m not quite sure what the “swap partition” you’re talking about is.
Oh man. Everyone, thanks for the input. This was just in time. Here’s what was going on in detail. I’ve been wanting to format my pc for a while. It was getting cluttered and I wanted to reorganize things a bit, which I did. When I got my laptop, I was really looking forward to doing this and I saw my laptop as an oppurtunity to have an extra back up HD, which it was. So yesterday after my last final, I transfered everything I wanted to my laptop and made my back up as I wanted. Well …do you guys remember my problem with my display? The fuzz/rectangles? Well its been happening occasionally but it got so bad lately that I called Dell this morning because my laptop was snapping out of it. So they told me it was probably the video card that needed to be changed after we tested a few things out and they said they’d pick it up around 3 today (which is now). Well the guy came a little bit early and I had just completed the format followed by the windows installation and the transfer of information back to my desktop which is now the back up for the laptop. Whew.
The only thing that sucks, although this is why I’m happy about the partitions, is that windows won’t allow me to authenticate/activate XP and I have 30 days to do so. When I installed XP , it didn’t ask me for my cd key and I figure this means I probably need to format the windows partition and reinstall windows, which now will not be such a killer, esp since I’m not under a time crunch.
Ah, about the activation, it doesn’t allow you to do so by the internet because you’re already on their database as activated. For the cases when people have formatted their machines and reinstalled XP, activation is done by phone. When you go activating there is an option that when chosen instructs you to call a certain phone number, in which you’ll talk to a callcenter person who’ll tell you to write a few numbers in a few textboxes that’ll appear in the activation window. You should try it.
Tried. I talked to a machine that wouldn’t address questions :P. Not a customer service rep.
Ice Cubes.
:hahaha;