I bought my HP laptop from Staples, and i need to reformat it, but i wasn't given an XP cd. Is there a way i can reformat it without it. I have a XP disk for my other computer, can i use that one?
2007-01-12 07:25:10 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Software
Yes
there is free software available, DOS, for example to format the drive and set uyp partitions, etc...
2007-01-12 07:28:27 · answer #1 · answered by god knows and sees else Yahoo 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes. This is considering you have had the windows xp already formatted or loaded on your laptop. In the ALL PROGRAMS window, click on PC HELP & TOOLS. This will take you to the Recovery part. There is a part where you can make your own DVD or CD Recovery Disk. Read on this and it explains how to use this. But after you reformat come back and do the DVD Recovery part. Then you can go to the part where you can do a "hard" or "soft" recovery on you laptop. Now the hard recovery will reformat your drive to factory settings and your desktop will have the icons that came with the laptop. The soft recovery will erase the data files. But when you are through, if you had, say 30 icons on there, everything is there but the data you saved up. You still have the game, but the levels you spent years on are erased. Save all files you want on a seperate disk and reload later. Yes, you do have to get your windows up dates again. If you do recovery, load your anti-virus disk first without getting on the internet if it is possible, that is if you have the disk. Or if you have to get on the internet to download the anti-virus programs, do this first. The SECOND thing to do is the windows update. It is a pain, but with my DSL it took a couple of hours to do this. With windows update autoload on, check the TURN OFF WINDOW and when the windows download icon is on the TURN OFF then click turn off and the computer will download the updates it has downloaded so far. I did this about every 10 to 15 minutes. The icon in the bar at the bottom may show 30% downloaded. You do not have to wait for 100% to download..
2007-01-12 15:42:55 · answer #2 · answered by Big C 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Assuming you have XP installed on this laptop, you can go to Start, My Computer and right click on the drive you wish to format, scroll down to Format and click on it.
2007-01-12 15:32:04 · answer #3 · answered by Wiz 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋