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reformating hard drive
mudaddict
Member Posts: 12
Ok sooo..I want to reformat my hard drive but when i try to boot from the xp cd...it won't work.. When the screen that pops up that says press any key to boot from cd comes up...i hit like 103921 keys and it just loads into windows..Any ideas on what i can do?
Comments
Not really sure as if your getting the prompt to boot from CD you should be set up correctly but you may want to check the boot order in your CMOS. Its usually either F1 or DEL you hit during the memory check to get into the CMOS (Called 'Setup' on some systems). After your in one of the screens should be the order that your computer checks the bootable devices for an OS. Make sure that the CD-ROM is higher on the list then Hard Disk Drive 0 (HDD0 or IDE0 on some systems). This may help but as I said before if your getting the 'boot from CD' message this should be set up already. Only thing I can think of.
Edit: Also check to make sure that your Windows XP CD is clean and has no deep scratches. If it has a read error while trying to boot it will automatically go to the next boot device on some systems. This would be the hard drive in your case.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
Hrm it's weird...I went into the Bios thingy and checked my boot order and Cd was first, followed by hard drive like it is suppose to be. One thing i found odd though was there was another option on the startup that was called "Boot from" and i had to push f12 or one of those buttons...and it brought up a list just like in the bios pretty much.. and it had hard disk selected.. The odd thing was that it wouldnt let me change it, the up and down arrows that it showed to move didn't do anything., so i'm thinking that is the problem..I wonder why there are 2 different screens though for booting...Any idea how to get around this?
Is your CD IDE and your HDD SATA? Sounds like something isn't powering on. Also You sure its a CD and not a DVD?
Was Windows XP ever released on a DVD? I don't think it was as it doesn't even fill a whole CD completely. Not even with Service Pack 2 included.
Edit: OP....You may just want to ask someone you know that knows computers or go into a local repair shop and ask them. It sounds like there may be something going on that you may not be able to explain to us here. The quickest solution to your problem would be to have someone look at it that knows what they are doing.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
This may be a very dumb question to ask the OP but here goes....
Is this computer a homemade one or a pre built machine from a company like dell, compaq,hp etc?
I only ask this because alot of prebuilt comps that have the operating systems hardwired into the harddrive are difficult to reformat. For example my stepson has a dell that he wanted reformatted but ran into the same probs as you. I figured he missed something easy and tried to reformat as well which resulted in me being stumped as well. Nothing in his owners manual said how either. After a few hours reading through posts on the dell website I discovered this gem. In order to reformatt the hard drive you have to power up the machine holding ctrl F 11.
So if its a prebuilt machine check the manufacturers website for more info.
Cedd
Like the poster above me said. Sometimesif you have one of those prebuilt comp system you should think twice before you format hardrive.
I have a acer with vista operating system pre built system ( it was cheap and didnt need anything better). I dont think I could instal xp on it even if for some reason I wanted to.
with the pre built systems I think you are supposed to copy the whole setup onto a cd, and then if you want to reformat you use that cd to set up the system again. If you dont have that backup, im sure you can have it sent to you from support for a small fee.
Yeah, it's pre-built from cyberpower. Maybe the ctrl+f11 thing will work :0 , hopefully. Thanks.