Guest heliocentric Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 hi how do i format my main drive on xp....i have no boot disk cd to go into command promt...and no floopy drive...http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm would this help me get into command prompt so i can format from there?i'm at a new loss....thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trackrat Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 I have the ultimate boot cd and have just been looking at the tools on it and I cannot see a tool for formatting the hard drive.Could you get a friend to download a fdisk program and burn it to a cdrw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djohn Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 Hello heliocentric. :) You don't need a boot disk with XP as it is a self booting disk. If you have the XP CD then you can insert this and format your drive, reinstall from there. Will you please let us know if you have an XP CD or is it a restore/recovery disk you have? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest heliocentric Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 Hello heliocentric. :) You don't need a boot disk with XP as it is a self booting disk. If you have the XP CD then you can insert this and format your drive, reinstall from there. Will you please let us know if you have an XP CD or is it a restore/recovery disk you have?<{POST_SNAPBACK}>i have no disks at all lol....just a window 95 install disk and and xp upgrade disk....plus my floopy drive doesnt work.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 Assuming that W95 is a qualifiying disc for an XP upgrade (I think it is but can't remember), what you need to do is organise your computer to boot from CD then insert the XP disc and let it install. At some point in the process it will ask for the qualifying operating system. At this point you put the W95 disc in the machine, setup looks at it and tells you to re-insert the XP disc and it carries on from there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest heliocentric Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 Assuming that W95 is a qualifiying disc for an XP upgrade (I think it is but can't remember), what you need to do is organise your computer to boot from CD then insert the XP disc and let it install. At some point in the process it will ask for the qualifying operating system. At this point you put the W95 disc in the machine, setup looks at it and tells you to re-insert the XP disc and it carries on from there.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>how do i do that??i've tried booting up with both the cds in the drive but nothing happens...i've only ever installed win95 then the xp upgrade ontop of that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 Do you have the manual for your motherboard?In that it will tell you how to access the BIOS on startup. When in the BIOS, you can change the boot sequence. In older systems it was normally floppy then HDD. You should change that to CD then HDD.Thinking about it, though, if you have a machine designed for W95, are you certain that it is suitable for WXP? Remember that the operating system itself occupies several gigabytes - several times the total hard drive capacity of many W95 machines.My experiences of upgrading W95 machines to XP have not been very encouraging. Think carefully before you spend much effort on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madboy33 Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 you can not upgrade XP from windows 95 http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/matrix.mspx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest heliocentric Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 Do you have the manual for your motherboard?In that it will tell you how to access the BIOS on startup. When in the BIOS, you can change the boot sequence. In older systems it was normally floppy then HDD. You should change that to CD then HDD.Thinking about it, though, if you have a machine designed for W95, are you certain that it is suitable for WXP? Remember that the operating system itself occupies several gigabytes - several times the total hard drive capacity of many W95 machines.My experiences of upgrading W95 machines to XP have not been very encouraging. Think carefully before you spend much effort on this.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>its a xp machine i built myself....the only reason i install with win95 1st is because i only have the xp upgrade disk that needs win95 as a base to install on...i'm reformatting and installing again cos i'm selling the computer onso u think i can do it using bios? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madboy33 Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 you can not upgrade XP from windows 95http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/matrix.mspx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 As madboy33™ states, W95 is not a qualifying version to upgrade from - which probably explains at least part of my failure to do it in the past.When I wrote my first reply here, as you may see, I was uncertain but the references given by madboy33™ determine that you cannot do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest heliocentric Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 As madboy33™ states, W95 is not a qualifying version to upgrade from - which probably explains at least part of my failure to do it in the past.When I wrote my first reply here, as you may see, I was uncertain but the references given by madboy33™ determine that you cannot do it.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>well i have done it before....lolanyway i'm not worried bout that, just how to format my drive...any help would be great Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 Well, XP will still, at the least, begin to install itself by setting the boot sequence to be CD first. If you built the machine yourself, you should be familiar with entering and adjusting the BIOS. The procedure is similar for most motherboards but there are distinct differences between the types and it is best that you follow the procedure for your particular board.If you want advice how to do it, come back here and we can give you a general outline. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest heliocentric Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 Well, XP will still, at the least, begin to install itself by setting the boot sequence to be CD first. If you built the machine yourself, you should be familiar with entering and adjusting the BIOS. The procedure is similar for most motherboards but there are distinct differences between the types and it is best that you follow the procedure for your particular board.If you want advice how to do it, come back here and we can give you a general outline.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>plz give me an outline...i need it loland this will help me format ?thanks alot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r4may Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 If you just want to format your hard drive, get you HD maufacturers Utility on to a CD and use that.Maxtor use Maxiblast which allows you to patition and format any of it's hard Disks and can be downloaded from their site (Bootable ISO Image :- http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/m...s&downloadID=19Other makes have simular utilities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homecomputeraid Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 You shouldn't have to do anything fancy to format your HDD. Make a Bootdisk from http://www.bootdisk.com. Add smartdrv (it's an executable file you can find and copy from your Hard Drive). If your partition on the XP machine is NTFS, you'll have to treat the NTFS Partition as Non-Dos.The boot disk will have a utility on it called fdisk (stands for fix disk). You boot to the floppy, and type fdisk at the DOS prompt. You'll get a list of options. I usually start by looking at the present partitions (I believe it's option 4). If you have a small dos or non-dos partition at the beginning of your Hard Drive, DO NOT DELETE IT. It may be a "system partition" depending on your PC Mfgr. Find your main partition and see whether it's file system is FAT, FAT32, or NTFS.I don't have a floppy on this laptop, so I can't run it right now, but I believe option 2 will be delete partitions. You'll have to select the partition you want to delete, and type the partition name exactly as it appears (case sensitive) to delete it. You'll be asked to confirm, and if you're sure you want to remove it type yes to delete.You can create a new partition in the same step, but your changes won't take effect until you reboot. You can't format (if you're going to) until after you reboot.You won't be able to install some OS's until you partition and format the hard drive.To format, you type format c:. It takes a while to format.Hope this helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest heliocentric Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 thats great but i have no floppy drive :(is it possible to make a bootable cd that does the same job Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
homecomputeraid Posted December 7, 2004 Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 Do you have Nero CD burning software? If so, you can try this link:http://www.bootdisk.com/nero.htmIf not, please post and I'll look for more options.Sincerely, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cpt James T. Kirk Posted December 10, 2004 Report Share Posted December 10, 2004 you can not upgrade XP from windows 95http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/matrix.mspxoh yeas you can. i had a 95 oem disk and a xp upgrade and all you had to do was slap the xp disk in and when asked for verified os slap 95 in and it read it then asked for xp and installed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarecrow Man Posted December 10, 2004 Report Share Posted December 10, 2004 No floppy.. and no bootable CD?Put the drive into a differen't computer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scuzzman Posted December 13, 2004 Report Share Posted December 13, 2004 Download Knoppix - use it (Linux - has a copy of qtparted) to repartiton the drive as FAT32reinstall using some medium (since you dont have a disk), adn during the reinstall, conver tthe fat32 into ntfsyou can get Knoppix here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.