how to erase C: drive

[supersaver]

Please help:
I want to wipe my hard drive.
I tried :

1) Go into recovery mode of win xp then used format c: /fs:ntfs command. Nothing happens.

2) Tried setup win XP but it cannot delete the partition stating that C: has some setup files so it cannot erase.

3) Tried delpart.exe --> nothing happens....


Why it is so difficult to erase a hard drive?????
Or I am missing something.....

Plz help.

Thanks.

 

[PowerMacG5]

Originally posted by: supersaver
Please help: I want to wipe my hard drive. I tried : 1) Go into recovery mode of win xp then used format c: /fs:ntfs command. Nothing happens. 2) Tried setup win XP but it cannot delete the partition stating that C: has some setup files so it cannot erase. 3) Tried delpart.exe --> nothing happens.... Why it is so difficult to erase a hard drive????? Or I am missing something..... Plz help. Thanks.

If you want to format C:, you must boot from CD, not start the CD in Windows, then boot down. You must boot from CD> If you start in Windows, some setup files are copied to the local disk (C and this will prevent you from erasing the partition and creating a new one.

 

[LordUnum]

Yup, boot from the CD then format/partition from there. The days of 'format C: /u' and 'fdisk' are good as gone.

 

[supersaver]

I went into BIOS and selected CD-ROM drives as the first one in the list.
Then I saved and exit.

Still, my PC won't boot from the CD.
What could be the problem.

One thing is that, I have legal copy of XP, distributed from work with volume license as ISO file. I used magicISO program to extract it and burn it on the CD. Could this be a problem?

 

[kursplat]

The days of 'format C: /u' and 'fdisk' are good as gone.

he he thats fur-sure . i was just trying to convince a guy at work that the comp he's building (his 3rd i think)
a.doesn't NEED a floppy if he has no flopy disks and
b.if he just boots the CD (win XP) he doesn't need to use the western digital utility to format the drive (like the guys at fry's told to)

good luck supersaver

 

[Nothinman]

a.doesn't NEED a floppy if he has no flopy disks and

How will be update his BIOS then, waste a CD-R?

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: supersaver
I used magicISO program to extract it and burn it on the CD. Could this be a problem?

Most likely yes. Something probably went wrong somewhere in the process and you've been trying to boot a non-bootable CD. Since you could start the install from a running system, it sounds like magicISO just extracted the files and didn't keep the boot sector. You need to use a burning program with something like a "burn as image" option.

 

[Nothinman]

Most likely yes. Something probably went wrong somewhere in the process and you've been trying to boot a non-bootable CD

Nothing went wrong, when you 'extract' an ISO you lose the boot information in the El-torito part of the ISO filesystem even though the boot images may still be there.

 

[supersaver]

anyway to recover the boot info from ISO file?

If not then, how do I proceed with the erasing C: drive and re-installing clean win XP on it?

Thanks.

 

[Nothinman]

anyway to recover the boot info from ISO file?

It's in there, just burn the ISO instead of extracting it.

 

[kursplat]

How will be update his BIOS then, waste a CD-R?

CD-RW?

 

[Nothinman]

Then what about storage drivers? When you install Windows and press F6 to give it a driver the only option is to use a floppy.

 

[XBoxLPU]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Then what about storage drivers? When you install Windows and press F6 to give it a driver the only option is to use a floppy.

Originally posted by: Confused

I have a solution for this. It's not too pretty, but it allows you to get past the text based portion of the setup without a floppy drive.

My RAID drivers came on a CD, and told me to copy them to a floppy. Of course I have no floppy, and so I finally found half a guide on the internet, and tweaked it to this, and this works


This is how I added my Silicon Image 680r ATA133 RAID Drivers to my Windows XP CD:

Copy the entire contents of the XP CD to a directory on your hard drive, for example C:\XP\

(This next step may not be necessary, I'm not sure)
Copy the TxtSetup.oem and PnP680r.sys and PnP680r.inf files (or just all the files that came on the driver CD, I am using PnP680r in my example because that's what my files are called) to C:\XP\I386\$OEM$\$$\DRIVERS\IDE
(End maybe unneccessary step)

Also copy the .sys file to C:\XP\I386

Open the TXTSETUP.oem file that came with your card with Wordpad

Open the TXTSETUP.SIF file in C:\XP\I386 with Wordpad

In TXTSETUP.SIF, search for [SourceDisksFiles] and add PnP680r.sys = 1,,,,,,_x,4,1 in this section

Search for PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3092&SUBSYS_00018086 = "i2omp" and add a line after it, using the same format, but using the information from the txtsetup.oem file.

Search for hpt3xx = hpt3xx.sys,4 and add the line PnP680r = PnP680r.sys,4 after it

Search for perc2gat = "Dell PERC 2/3 RAID Controller (Gatling)" and add the line that looks similar from your txtsetup.oem file. Otherwise, copy this line, and change the first bit to the name of your .sys file, and the 2nd bit to the name of the card.

Of course you will have to change everything to match the name of your .sys file


Then, you will need to burn all this back to a CD, and make the CD bootable. You can do this using Bart's Boot Image Extractor to pull the boot image from original Windows XP CD, then use that image as an image to make the CD bootable


This worked for me, to get me past the text based bit of the setup, and into Windows. Once there, install the RAID driver from the original CD, otherwise you'll have absolutely terrible IDE performance!!

How will be update his BIOS then, waste a CD-R?

USB Pen drive, cd-rw, Windows ?

 

[Nothinman]

USB Pen drive, cd-rw, Windows ?

My BIOS doesn't boot from USB, but I suppose that's getting more common. Bootable CDs aren't too bad an idea, but they're more work to create. I would never update my BIOS in a preemptive multitasking environment, not even Linux which I trust for most things.