i need a quick and easy "how to" F disc a hard drive to get it ready for a complete re-install of the OS and everything else. i will be re-installing from "Recovery" disk if that matters. hard drive is used and i want to completely erase and re-install.

Windows XP machine.

speak in simple english, i am not a total tech geek. thanks in advance.

matt

 

Just put in the recovery disk, it will give you the option of wiping harddriveor just reinstall windows. Just choose to wipe the drive and install.

 

but will that clean all the old stuff or will there still be files left on the hard drive? i want the hard drive completely purged.

thanks.

 

it should give you the option to completely re-format the drive.

 

FDISK is for creating and deleting partitions on your harddisk... you should be careful if your have more than 1 partition on your hard drive...

the wiping feature should wipe it clean... but i havent had to recover an XP yet...

do you have an old DOS based boot disk (i think those still exist)...

 

The preferred method of installing XP is booting from XP Disk or recovery disk and follow the instructions. Choose "Install Windows XP" then it will go into a new screen that lists a bunch of steps. From the from the pulldown menu choose "New Installation (Advanced)" and let the software do the rest. Along with updates and other software to install, It should take you a few hours.

 

If you are restoring from a recovery disk, most times that overwrites the partition anyway thus cleaning the drive. Use of fdisk to delete all partitions first would be an extra security measure.

 

thanks guys, i got it doing its thing currently. should be up and running later today.