fdisk?

my freinds computer is realy screwed up (he deos not take care of it ) so i was thinking to format his entire hard drive and install windows xp home edition agian. then he can just install security and take care of it . the problem is that i went to the command prompt and typed fdisk to format his hd but it said not reconized as a command. How do i format his hd



He has windows xp home

:confused:

With XP, the easiest way I know is to press F8 while booting. Select boot from CD when promted and the reformat from the CD. (Installation CD that is)

disturb,

Before you use these commands you'll definitely want to read up on the difference between fdisk and format c:

Inparticular, what they are used for and how to use them.

www.google.com is your friend

cheers

hi there,
personally put xp home disk in cdrom drive, would start pc and go to bios.change to boot from cdrom.save and exit.pc will boot from cdrom and you are set>>>just follow instalation proces.:)

sorry i was out the wrong thing i meant format c:

i know what fdisk is for :brickwall lol

lol, you cant format your hdd when you have booted into windows as it would eventually delete the files it needs to operate and would have to shut down half way through the format, if you can see what I mean?

Formating a windows xp hdd isnt quite the same as doing it with win98, where as with win 98 you would boot from the start up floppy disc and then type format c: , in win xp you need to boot your system up from the win xp CD.

Check in your bios under boot option (or something similar) and make sure you are booting from the CD ROM first.

Once you have ensured this put the win xp disc in and restart your computer. You will get a screen asking you to press "R" to enter the recovery console or press enter to install windows //press enter here if you want to format and start afresh.
Next it will show you a list of any partitions you have and ask where you want windows to go, select your primary partition //usually C.

It will then ask you "are you sure you want to install here (or words to that effect) if so press "C" to continue. Press C.

It will then warn you that having multiple O/S's on the same partition aint a good idea......... do you want to format? if so press "F". Press F.

It will do the rest by itself, the next thing you will have to do is choose your country, time zone etc etc.

happy fdisk'in ;-)