Windows XP won't let me format the drive...?

Question

My computer is messed up right now (im using a different one). I'm trying to install Windows 2000 because XP crashes all the time. But XP won't let me run the 2000 cd and it won't boot from the disk at start up.

Answer 1

You have to enter the system BIOS (or SETUP) during reboot. Do this with F1 or DEL or F2 during the early stages of startup. Then look for the BOOT ORDER settings, and allow your CD drive to boot BEFORE the hard drive.

Then REBOOT onto the Windows 2000 disk and go through the setup. Be sure to use the DELETE feature to DELETE your corrupt Windows XP partition, so it will create a new partition and FORMAT your hard drive. PICK the NTFS file system.

Good luck and Happy Computing!

Answer 2

Its not a hard thing to do
There are various options depending on whether you have a diskette drive and how much you need to be destructive
Basically you want to wipe out the hard drive and start fresh

1) You can boot with a windows 98 diskette or cd
go into dos prompt
type c: fdisk
delete the partition (s)
If it is standard ntsf xp install then it is non dos partition ( number 4)
delete it
When you install 2000 it will start fresh

2) You can start the xp install cd
You may need diskettes .
You want to do an advanced install
Let it format the drive ( fully) and then turn off the computer and install 2000
it should format the drive

3) If you know the manufacturer of the hard drive ( seagate, maxtor / seagate now , western digital you can go to their website and get a utility to overwrite the drive with 1s and os.
will take a long time but is guaranteed to work , if not hard on the hard drive

4) You can format with a Linux install

5) a free version of the utility killdisk
will create a bootable disk to overwrite the drive

For the bootdisks - 98 , 2000 ,xp go to bootdisk.com

Answer 3

There are two things you need to do.

The first is to enable "Boot from CD" in your BIOS. To do this, hit the "delete" key when you start your computer. This will take you to the BIOS setup, where you can specify your CD drive as the primary boot disk.

Next, restart your computer and keep hitting the F8 key (don't keep it pressed, hit it over and over) until you get a menu with options like "Start Windows Normally", "Start in Safe Mode", etc.

Select "Command Prompt only". (I'm sorry, it may be a different nomenclature and I can't check it out without restarting my computer and I don't know if I'll be able to navigate back to this question if I do).

Format your C Drive by typing:
format c:

Put your 2000 CD in the CD drive and restart your computer, then follow the prompts.

Hope this helps.

If something goes wrong, call the nearest hardware shop and they'll set your computer right.

All the best.

Answer 4

Do you have a Windows 2000 CD, if you do, just put it in the CD Rom and restart, if it don't pick up the Windows right away, you have to go to the Bios Screen and change the boot setting to CD Rom, when you are done with that save the changes made and restart again. Be sure to keep the disc in the CD Rom. If it picks up the CD it might tell you to push on any key to let you boot it up from the disc. I hope this helps because I am after formatting mine a few times.

Answer 5

You should f disk wipe everything out ...then install it .
It is better as your starting with a clean slate ...even if you were able to install 2000 over xp it would not keep your exsisting files in tacked and more likely new drivers would be needed ...so in the end it saves time to just fdisk from the begining

Answer 6

i have a dell and i cant just use c:/format its funky
i have to use xp install cd to format. if you have a floppy put in and format and make it a bootdisk u just have to check that box
then restart and it should boot from floppy then maybe you can format from dos or go to d drive and put in setup may help

Answer 7

You will need to boot from win 2k floppies

Answer 8

danuitti is correct