Reformatting hard drive?

[Jester1 0]

Newbie here.

 

I have a Dell 8200, which I have had for a while. It is starting to get slow, and I want to completely erase everything, re-format the hard drive, and re-install Windows XP. I have the Windows XP disk, but have just recently gotten into computers, and have no idea where to begin. If anyone would have some information, a web site, or anything that could show me the way would be greatly appreciated.

[Wicked101 0]

First you have to make sure that your BIOS is set up to boot off your CD before Hard Drive, when the PC starts up press your correct key to boot into BIOS, it depends on what PC you have, its oither one of these ESC/F2/F10/F12/DEL, if I can remember correctly DELL uses F2, but I might be wrong:)

Then look for the boot option and make CD the first boot device and hard drive the second, save and exit the BIOS.

Put the WinXP CD into the drive and start the PC, at some stage it should ask you to press any key to boot from CD, do so.

Then the windows XP install starts. Foolow the instructions, its very easy. When you get to the part where you have to select with Hard Drive partition you want to install it on you should see a list of all your hard drives and partitions, then you can delete them and create new ones, that way when you start the install it'll format that partition.

[vee 0]

Will this work on SATA drives? I built my own computer using 2 WD SATA 250 gig drives. THe mobo is MSI K8 Neo Platinum 939.

Athlon 3500 processor.

 

I installed windows XP (bought at a computer fair) it was counterfeit and I ended up having to buy a key from MS. They sent a new disk and said I needed to reinstall windows fromt thier disk.

I tried to do a new install and it didn't go through.

My error - 1st Time I built a computer- forgot to partition so have this giant HD. Windows will NOT let me delete the "partition" there is only 1. and I cannot install the new XP over the old. It's not letting me. I went into R for repair and tried to "format C:" and it won't do it.

 

What Can I do. I want to start over with a clean install, have the new xp os going, and be able to partition the huge drive in to 3 or 4 smaller drives. HELP !!!

Thanks for any help you can give me

Vee

[Wilhelmus 1]

Press D to delete an existing partition. If you press D to delete an existing partition, you must then press L (or press ENTER, and then press L if it is the System partition) to confirm that you want to delete that partition.

 

Or download Ultimate Boot CD from http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and use it's partition tools to partition your HD.