Do I need a special program to format my hard drive?
I mean, can’t the hard drive formats by itself?
I have Win XP installed and I am trying to find a way how to format the hard drive but notning…
Another thing:
I have Partition Magic 8 on a software CD but I am affraid to format the HD with this program before asking someone for advice and proper instructions.
I also have the Windows XP Professional Install CD.
Thanks in advance guys,
Pavle
Acually your Windows XP Pro CD will do it all. Simply go to your Bios and set your boot to the Optical drive with the XP Pro CD to first boot device. Press enter when it says boot to CD and Windows will go through an install procedure and give you the option to do select the drive you want to install Windows on and then give you the option to do a quick or full format. You can even use it to make several partitions. Once that is done Windows will install on the formatted drive. Pretty simple just follow the prompts. Lots of other ways to format but without getting too involved this is one way. HTH.
BTW Full Format is better IMO but it takes a while.
Edit: If your Hard drive is larger than 130 Gb you will need to get a utility from your HD manufacturer to see the full drive as Windows only sees around 130 GB and will not format the whole drive.
No need for the Windows XP CD.
Just go into Control Manager->Admin Tools-> Computer Management & Disk Management.
Right click on the new HD & off you go.
not really service pack 1 or 2 will get the job done anyway i recommend integrating sp prior installing , a “utility” from hd manufacturer to create dynamic drive overlay is needed only when the bios is too old to identify the hds full capacity
depends , if he have only 1 hd and he wanna reinstall then theres defintly a need for the windows cd but if he just wanna format a second hd then thats a good method , from what i understand he have only 1 
And just because you are asking a fairly noob question, I want to make sure that you understand that formatting your hd will erase all existing data…
Good to know. How do you integrate the SP before install so I will know the next time I format my 160 GB. Just did mine two weeks ago and got the 128 GB thing with unpartioned space left on the drive (forgot about the issue). So I reformated with Max blast. TIA.
Hi
If his OS is on this drive that will not work.
Hi
If you want to keep Windows XP, but tidy up & format the drive. Then PM 8 will let you do that. First install PM 8 & when it asks to for two floppies to create rescue disks. Do that. You can then get PM 8 running from Windows. The menu is fairly comprehensive, so enter what you want.ie You could have a partition with Windows on, another with office etc. It will then give a preview without many any changes. If your happy then you proceed with changes. Your system will boot, make changes, then reboot. Job done.
Thx Phil.
Yikes. Get “Max Blast” off that drive ASAP. Drive Overlays are horrid little things. I am NOT a big fan of using software to work around something that should be fixed in hardware. Seriously.
OK followed the SP2 Slipstream guide to the letter. What am I doing wrong?
Hi
Is your Windows oem. I notice in the article it mentions problems with SP2 & oem versions of Windows.
Hi Zabadee. No It’s XP Professional not an OEM Version…
this
you should use a \ instead
indeed but that doesnt apply to all oem versions,only those with integrated software updates
Thx Phil. Well I gave it a try and the same error message comes up as you can tell I am not good with DOS prompts.:o
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
© Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>C:\XP-SP2 /WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU /integrate:C:\XP-CD
‘C:\XP-SP2’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>
EDIt: Got it to work as I had a space in between C:\XP-SP2 /WindowsXP. So the correct prompt is:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>C:\XP-SP2/WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU /integrate:C:\XP-CD
Thank you again.
I have slipstreamed service packs into my OS for the past couple of years but I dont find any reason to do it manually anymore. Nlite, is a program that not only allows you to remove any unwanted windows programs, it also now slipstreams service packs as well as post SP2 hotfixes and then makes the ISO. it is a very simple program to use and is much quicker than the manual method.
Thanks everyone for the replies.
I will use your suggestions and see what I can do.
Pavle
