Help,
I need to wipe my son's Hard drive and re-install XP pro.
Well he's 13 going on 21 and he's been looking at stuff he shouldn't be even considering at his age.
Would someone send me a step by step procedure for formatting and re-installing XP pro?
I want to know how to boot from disc, changing the BIOS too.
The PC is a Compaq presario and, it's set up in a way that makes it hard to understand (For me).
Wallace Tait
mw.tait@sympatico.ca

ok to boot from the disk you should enter your bios by pressing F2 setup(button may vary you should find it in the top right of your boot screen) then scroll to boot configuration open that up and make the order go cd-rom, floppy, hard drive just make your cd rom drive first the floppy and HD could be in different order. Then restart and when booting your computer press F12(again the button might be different) Now you should have a screen with some options one option should be boot from cd select that and hit enter.

Wallace, the 'Reinstalling Windows' link in my sig will lead you to a couple of articles. One is about preparing for the reinstall, and the other is about performing it. They're both very detailed, step by step guides.

hi,

heres what you need to do:

1.restart the pc, when the pc shows the device listing screen(the screen that's shown before the XP logo when the pc is booting), press the 'delete' key on your keyboard. this will take you into the pc's setup utility.

2. look for a 'BIOS features' menu, select it and press the 'Enter' key on your keyboard. this will take you to a menu 'first boot device' (from which you can choose to start up from a cd-rom)

3. make sure that 'Floppy' is not selected as the first boot device, once you are sure that you have made the above mentioned changes, navigate back to the setup utility screen that you saw when you followed step1

4. insert the XP cd and select the option to save the changes you made as required by the utility menu.

once you've saved the changes, your pc should automatically restart from the XP cd, then just follw the instructions as required by the XP setup program..as the XP setup takes you through the steps required to install XP you should look for the option to full format the drive(eg C: or F on which XP will be installed..then just follow the promts as normal.

when you're done with the installation, you should reset the floppy as your first boot device(ie undo what you did in step2).

that's it! you should be ready to use your pc as normal, provided you re-install all the other software you were using before the XP Re-install.

good luck with keeping those teen hormones in check...


cheers buddy!

CHEERS TO ALL.
Wallace

hi
i am using a compaq presario
what you should do is restart the pc the press F10 to enter setup, but take note of this by defualt the first boot divice is the cd rom drive,then 3 & half then HD
so you do not need to change any thing in the BIOS
just place the XP CD in the drive when the PC is booting when the message to Boot frm CD come up press enter and follow instructions to install windows
-if you do not see the boot process press ESC when the PC is boot just after you get the compaq message
to clean the HD just "c" create a partition or do a quik format it is in the installation proccess