Thre are various steps in formatting your hard drive

I tried to install windows xp on my 3.5 partition. It changed the file format from fat32 to whatever windows xp uses. Now I cannot uninstall windows xp. I want to wipe out the hard drive and start over. But cannot format the partition because dos or win98 does not recognize it. How do I format the whole harddrive? THanks, Doug

This question was answered on October 31, 2002. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

Hi,

The first step is to make sure you backup your data!!!!This might include email,email adresses,documents,bookmarks etc use a zip disks

writeable cd's,floopies, whatever Once you backup, you will need a way to boot up your computer to format and re-install windows.The best way to do this is to use a boot disk, or my favorite a windows 98 startup disk It contains CD ROM drivers for just about any drive and includeds utilities like FDISK and FORMAT Once you have the CD-ROM access within DOS, you're ready to format Boot with your disk,

type "format c:" and type 'y' at the conformation prompt Pop in your windows CD, type "d:" and hit enter(where D is the drive letter of your CD-ROM)type CD win 95' or win 98 depending on the versions of windows, and hit enter Next run setup by typing 'setup' and hitting enter.Windows should run you through the rest of the procedure.

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Posted by Dan of Mesa Community College on October 31, 2002

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