need help! winxp install and reformatting HD

[howard]

need some quick help... i'm reinstalling xp on a friends machine and when it got done (upgrade version) the hard drive had an icon that xp uses for unrecognizable file..and i couldn't double clip to open it...though if i right clicked and pressed open it works fine... it knows its a hard drive... also theres a partition, that works fine. i tryed reinstalling xp and reformatting, it did it to the partition...which is fine i wanted it reformatted and xp installed on it...but it didn't do anything to the main partition... same problem. i tried reformatting it by right clicking and pressing format...it tries and by the end says it is unable to format

how do i reformat it? or solve this problem? i don't care if the end result is to get rid of the partition..and reinstall xp.. thats fine..i jsut want to wipe everything clean and restart..what is the best way?

 

[RoadKill]

Are you a glutton for punishment or what?

posting that on a mac site is just asking for trouble!!

It is exactly this kinda bulls*** that made me switch in october for a ibook g4 and never looked back.

My advice is to backup your files, blat the drive, phone up M$ and grovel for a new activation code and hope you can apply all the software updates before code_red/nimda/mydoom/<insert next nasty virus here> gets root and your back to square one.

 

[howard]

first of all, its not my computer... i posted this on macrumors cause i know i can usually get a quick and reliable response, which i need rather than searching for a lousy pc tech forum that you have to pay 10 bucks for an answer...

now i did back up everything and i'm trying to reformatt..thats the trouble i'm having, it won't reformat...

any other ideas?

 

[RoadKill]

First rule of computers, never ever bloody ever try to help with friends pc's. If you fix it they'll never stop asking you and if you don't they'll hate you!

That said,..You've backed all their data!!!

So when you go through the OS installation you should be able to delete existing partitions and recreate them and then format in either ntfs or fat32

This part is one of the first questions xp installer asks you whilst it's still in the blue/yellow text phase.

I've never used XP home, only professional so it may be different.

failing that try and download a bootdisk and fdisk the drive. reboot and install xp and it should complain about a new disk and needs to be formatted

 

[howard]

that worked, thanks for you help

 

[richland]

which i need rather than searching for a lousy pc tech forum that you have to pay 10 bucks for an answer...

pay $10 bucks? Wow, that sucks.

Dont know what forum that is, but there are many PC forums out there that will help you out for free and quickly.

Also, next time, you could try the windows chat at www.yahoo.com

Lots of answers can be found there if needed.

 

[Jo-Kun]

yes, putting this on a macrumors site is indeed a bit...

but imagine off course, a lot of Mac users have been windows users in another life...

I for an example started off on an old 486 running win 3.11
then I got a new PII 450 because of lack of funding to buy a mac (just stay honest ;-))
that one started off with win98, then 98SE, later came Win2000 followed up with XP and then back to Win2000 because it couldn't run XP properly, then I bought a B&W G3 since I was using Mac at work all the time
I installed Jaguar on it, plunged it full of ram, and it ran fine (my PII had the same age, but couldn't handle MS newest: XP...)
I sold that G3 when I got my PowerBook, and I ve heared from the owner that she now uses Panther...

so macs are worth their money, they just last much longer and keep up to date with the latest OS editions

but we all know PC issues I guess, so if someone comes up to me with a PC question I allways help them, ok after telling them: GET A MAC

and paying for OS support, sorry, never did that, but I've learned the hard way trough installing and reinstalling Os-es

people call me with PC & Mac problems ;-)

but I stay with Apple, and hope to find the funding for a G5, not for the looks, just for the power!

 

[mklos]

first of all, its not my computer... i posted this on macrumors cause i know i can usually get a quick and reliable response, which i need rather than searching for a lousy pc tech forum that you have to pay 10 bucks for an answer...

now i did back up everything and i'm trying to reformatt..thats the trouble i'm having, it won't reformat...

any other ideas?

Number solution....tell your buddy to buy a Mac. It will save is a $hitload of problems down the road!

 

[7on]

bah, I wished Mac people had problems here on campus. I think 2 macies needed my help, one to help with a network prob (she ejected the drive by accident and didn't know) and the other to install panther. The amount of PC problems people have had has made me dizzy....

Most of the time it was from having Norton and McAfree installed at the same time.

 

[varmit]

he did think right

most here that know mac problems, also solve PC problems for a living. Thats what I do, Techy at my school for the Science department in the Fenske Labs. Couple hundred PCs and a few macs, Only needed to work on the macs once, guy trying to install 10.2 on an old imac and didn't update bios/pram which the mac was asking the guy to do, he just didn't do it.