John Barnett Computer Journalist
XP Help and Support

Before formatting your hard drive you should take the opportunity to back up all important files and folders. As soon as you reformat your hard drive ALL data on that drive or partition will be destroyed.

1/ Before you can format your drive from the Windows XP CD you must ensure that your pc is able to boot directly from the CD - see Enabling CD-ROM support in the BIOS

2/ Insert the XP CD into your CD-ROM and reboot your machine.

3/When the Welcome to Setup screen appears press Enter

4/The next screen will show the license agreement. To accept press F8

5/Setup will now scan your drive for existing copies of Windows.

6/ If another copy of Windows is found you will be given two options

• a) Repair

• b) Install New Copy

7/ You need to install a New Copy so press ESC

8/ The next Window will show a list of all current drives and partitions.

9/ Select the C: drive for your installation to be installed to and press Enter

10/ The next window will show the format options. These are:

• Format the partition by using the NTFS file system (quick)

• Format the partition by using the FAT32 file system (quick)

• Format the partition by using the NTFS file system

• Format the partition by using the FAT32 file system

• Leave the current file system intact (No Changes)

The FAT32 file system is not available if your hard drive  or selected partition is larger than 32GB

11/ Select the file system you want to use and press Enter

12/ Your hard drive/partition will now begin to format

13/ After formatting has been completed Windows XP will continue to install on your hard drive.