Steps of Formatting?

[quaycur]

Ok, I'm asking this because I need to be cautious, because this is the only PC in the house, so I can't mess it up.

I was wondering what are all the steps to formatting a PC?
I use Windows XP.
(i think i have a phoenix bios if that means anything)

Also, my main concerns are about 'partitioning'. and my motherboard drivers (will it run witout any, since I reformat everythings gonna be gone)

Please help this noob.

[Norgus]

Well formatting would be easy as hell. You just boot a boot floppy and run fdisk (use it to delete all partitions).

Then you type format C:\ I believe.

Explain what you want to do once you have a formatted hard drive.

[Xaenn]

Well, what do you want to do with your partitions?

The steps I suggest would be to first back up all data you don't want to lose (duh). Then once you've done that you can either boot off of a disk with fdisk on it, or it's probably on one of your install cds. Then you can delete all of your partitions (maybe just one) and then create the new ones you want. Then choose to install on whichever one you want.

Once you reformat, you can't use your pc until you install a new OS, was that your question?

[Ace]

No need to partition if you're happy with the way it's already partitioned in.

Make sure that booting from CD is enabled, then insert the windows XP cd, and reboot. You should see something along the lines of 'press any key now if you want to boot from cd'. Hit a key. Then follow the on screen instructions untill you can select where to install. Select the drive you want to install windows XP on and then select Fast format (either NTFS, or FAT32, depends on what you want really, although I would suggest NTFS.) Now just fill in all the screens windows gives you (Shouldn't be that many) and you're done.

Windows should be able to use most features of your computer by default. Although to a lesser degree most of the time then it would if you install the actual drivers for your hardware. So you might want to make sure that you have all the drivers for the hardware you have burned to a CD or something.

[Jaws]

Do you have the actual WinXP cd? If so you can run from the cd and you can format the partition and install windows in about an hour.

[gamefreak777]

My computer won't boot from cd so I have to format and reinstall using the 6 floppy disks that you can get from below.
Just shut down your computer and put in disk 1 and then disk 2 etc. when it asks and it will have options for formating, reinstalling etc. I deleted my partition and then created another one then reinstalled it. Its incredily simple to do, you will see. You don't have to worry about messing up. You can download the program that makes the 6 floppy disks from the website below.

http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml

[Mishotaki]

maybe in your bios you just haven't checked the use of your cd-rom drive to check for a boot disk(mine wasn't) so you might want to check for that