Reinstalling Windows XP

[yabanci]

I have a 160mb hard drive in four partitions (all ntfs), with windows xp home sp1 installed on the first partition. What I want to do is format the first partion only and completely reinstall windows xp on a clean partition, but I don't want the windows xp cd to do the formating.

Can somebody tell me how I go about doing this?

 

[cleverhandle]

Perhaps Partition Magic can do this, but I don't know. Is there any particular reason you're making your life difficult by not using the CD?

 

[Booty]

Use partition magic rescue disks, I guess... but yeah, why not use the XP cd, since you've got it?

 

[EeyoreX]

Yeah, I'd also like to know why you don't want to use the Windows XP disk, especially when you want to install Windows anyhow. You could probably use PartitionMagic, or some other partition software. This would add an extra step to the install (first having to boot and format with your utility of choice, than having to boot and install Windows). I don't see any advantage to making it hard on yourself either. A NTFS formatted disk is an NTFS formatted disk. Regardless of what software does the formatting. (Same holds true for FAT32, FAT16, etc).

\Dan

 

[Retlaw5]

I have problems trying to use the cd partition application. If I Formatted my HD usuing maxblaster 3, windows XP would see my hole HD(160 gig) , if I waited for XP pro to recognize my HD before formating, it only saw 130 gig. I used Partition magic and made 3 partitions and formatted on NTFS and have no problems with XP pro seeing my HD.

 

[yabanci]

Because for some reason thatI cannot figure out, the windows xp cd will not fully boot. It stalls right before you get to the what do you want to do screen. Yes, the computer is set up to boot from the cd drive and I've tested the cd on a different computer and it works, and I've even been able to boot with other bootable cd-roms. I've done everything I can to figure out why it won't complete the boot to the windows cd (I even made a set of windows xp setup floppies, but it still stalls right before it gets to the what do you want to do screen). So it seems that something in my existing windows xp installation is corrupted, I don't know. It's a new computer with not many applications on it, but it turned out that Norton Systemworks messes with the recycle bin and caused a major problem with another one of my programs. So the best thing to do is reinstall windows xp and reinstall the few apps I have without norton systemworks.

I figure it's easier to find a different way to format and reinstall than to troubleshoot this mess anymore.

I'm reading elsewhere that the best thing to do is make a windows 98 setup disk and use it to format, then install windows.

 

[cleverhandle]

I would guess it's remotely possible, but quite unlikely, that any existing stuff on the drive is causing the boot process to hang. You can go ahead and delete the partition(s) with a 98 boot disk to find out, though. Much more likely to be a hardware issue of some sort. Bad memory, oddball devices, that kind of thing. It's also a sad fact that booting from a CD-ROM is not a 100% certain proposition, even with newer machines. The BIOS routines that govern those boot routines are not perfectly standardized among motherboard manufacturers. Sometimes a certain combination of mobo and CD just doesn't click. But hardware or memory would be my first guess for sure. What are the last couple messages you see before the hang?

 

[yabanci]

It says, "Setup is Loading Windows." Then everything stops.

 

[cleverhandle]

Yup, that's the last bit before partitioning. Since you're going to wipe the machine anyway - go ahead and delete the partitions with the 98 disk, maybe setup is choking on the partition table. No need to format - you'll be doing that again anyway. I would suspect bad memory is a more likely culprit - try memtest86 if you haven't already.