my computer wont work properly, how can i reformat my hard drive and start over?

Question

i deleted 2 gigs of hard disk programs and old files but windows says i only have 7mb! so, i believed i have too much viruses and spyware and thought i could just clean it up. I tried to reinstall windows xp with my xp cd but it says i cant the verision is older than the present one. and reformat wont do the job either because windows is using still running.
last year i had 4 gigs and now i only have 700mb, whats eating up my hard drive space?

im sorry i wasnt clear enough. my hard drive is 20 gigs.
i keep 4 gigs clear for Audio files, and i dont have enough money to get a new laptop seeing this one still works

my recycle bin is empty but i found 4 thousand files in my nero burning recycled folder. when i tried to delete them they just reaapeared.

ok, i did check the recycle bin and saw no files there and i highligted all the files in the nero folder and moved them. apparantly all the files the recycle bin became HIDDEN so i right clicked and highlighted everything and clicked on empty recycle bin, lo and behold, i got instant action and 4.2 gigs opened up. So i didnt have to Nuke the hard drive.

Answer 1

4 gigs is quite a small hard drive to install winxp on and even a few programs. Best bet would be to invest in a bigger hard drive.

To install winxp you need to boot it into the install you cant install it while the comp is running windows. You also need to make sure the winxp version you have is a full version that will clean install and it is not just an update version that you have.

How to clean install windows is avalable below.

Answer 2

Firstly make sure that the CD you are using to reinstall is actually a Windows XP disc. I have made the stupid mistake of putting the wrong disc (Windows 2000) in before.
One other thing is that when you delete files in Windows they go to the 'Recycle Bin'. Until you clear/empty the Recycle Bin, the space will still not be available.
My experience is that when you pop the Windows XP disc in and boot from it, it will try to detect current installations of Windows on hard disks it can see. You can then usually say I want to reinstall anyway and proceed to format it. Just dont try to use the 'Repair' option since you decided to nuke the hard disk.

Answer 3

You may want to try this before re-formatting.
After you deleted the files insure you empty the recycle bin.
Use disk cleanup and then download and run a program like CCleaner http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
That should remove a lot of junk and free up disk space.

To reformat make sure the CD is in the computer then restart the computer is should boot from the CD and let you format and reinstall Windows.

If the Computer will NOT boot from the CD but boots from the hard drive you will need to go into the BIOS and change the boot order to 1st boot CD 2nd boot HHD.

When asked it is best to delete all partitions and do a complete format. Follow the on screen prompts exactly.

NOTE: A 4 gigabyte hard drive is very small for Windows
XP, installing XP and all the updates will take up almost all of the hard drive. Consider a bigger hard drive.

Answer 4

Most probably you tried to Upgrade the installation. If you repartition and format and then install then it will not give you that error message about the version on the hard disk being newer.
On the installation screen It asks if you want to upgrade or to do a new install.
Select new install.
When the installation cd detects your computer hardware and stop at a screen. Press Enter to start Installation.
Then press F8 at the next screen to agree the licence agreement.
In the next window you can delete existing partitions. By selecting the partition by arrow keys and pressing D, press L to confirm, delete all the partitions you will get one single unformatted space.
Now create new partitions in the unpartitioned space.
Press C to create new partition.In your case one partition is enough.
Now select the c partition to install windows on , and proceed with installation.
Rest of the process is automated. You will need to click a few times to proceed, and it will reboot a few times where you are not expected to do anything till the installation is over.