format and reinstall of XP with no floppy
 

Hi all...

my sister has a bit of a problem that i've been trying to solve over the phone. turns out our last option is to reformat the c: and start again, not a prob as the laptop is v new and has almost nothing on it worth keeping and everything has been backed up anyway.

the problem is, i have no idea how to do this as it doesnt have a floppy drive. where do i get an effective dos prompt from with to do 'c: format'. and how will the OS reinstall from the cd if i cant install cdrom drivers from a floppy? unfortunately we dont have the option of using perhaps a usb drive as a secondary boot device.

can anyone explain how to do this please?

many thanks

Jim

ps. its a tiny laptop running winXP, system/driver version 12.

Hi R44
Am no expert but this should sort your problem. First of all make sure you have the original windows cd's that came with the computer.
You have to go into the BIOS and configure the pc so that it will boot from the D: drive first ( or whatever letter is allocated to your cd rom drive).
To do this shut down the pc and reboot...... during boot-up you will get an option to go into set-up ( you will see a note on the bottom or top of your screen telling you which F key to use..... it,s usually F1 or F2.
When in the set-up page scroll down till you see the boot sequence. You will then be able to configure it so that it will boot first from your cd rom drive.
There are a couple of ways to reformat the C: drive.
Go to" start" and double click MY COMPUTER. rt click on the C:drive. From the drop down list select FORMAT. For XP the normal file system is NTFS so select this option.
Shut down pc and insert your windows disk......restart and hopefully all you will have to do is follow the instructions from there on.
Incidentally if you ever want the dos C: prompt go to "Programmes" then "Accessories" and you will find it half way down the list.
Hope this helps. You may get some more expert advice than mine so watch the post for a while.
Good luck
Willby

r44flyer,

When you boot off of the WinXP CD, one of the options is allows you to add and remove partitions followed by the option to format the drives.

No Floppies required. ;)

Take Care,

Richard