Member Avatar for Diello

Hi.
First of all I just want t say that I do not know a lot about PC's.
Lately I bought my brothers "old" PC (2005). I want to format it, but have huge problems.
My main question is: Is there any way to format the PC from the BIOS-menu?
If not I guess I'm in trouble. I have tried to run a boot-CD (spotmau powersuite and microsoft XP) but the CD wont run. I have changed the settings in BIOS to check the CD-player at boot, but still nothing happens.
Also after doing things I probably shouldnt have done (cause I dont know enough about it) the Start-menu is gone, I can not run Task Manager, nor does using Ctrl+Alt+Del work anymore. And the worst thing is that I can't run any .exe files. If I try, I get an errormessage (with no number) saying "The programme couldnt start cause of a fault with the programe configuration. Try to re-install the programme" (translated from norwegian)

So back to my main question- I really just want to format the harddisk and start over again. Is it possible to do this without running a CD or using .exe files?

In advance- thanx for all help.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by cguan_77

Dani AI

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BIOS cannot format a disk — it only initializes hardware and chooses what to boot. With the Start menu, Task Manager and .exe execution broken on the installed Windows, the first priority is to rescue any important files before wiping the drive.

If another PC is available, create a bootable USB and use a Live environment to copy your data and then wipe the drive. Download a live ISO such as Ubuntu Desktop (https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop) or GParted Live (https://gparted.org/livecd.php), and write it to a USB stick with a tool like Rufus (https://rufus.ie/). Boot the problem PC from that USB, copy Documents, Desktop, browser profiles, etc. to an external disk, then use GParted (or the installer) to delete partitions and create a fresh NTFS partition before reinstalling Windows.

If the machine is too old to boot from USB, remove the hard drive and attach it to another computer (internal SATA connection or a SATA-to-USB adapter) to back up and reformat. If a full reinstall isn’t wanted, try booting into Safe Mode (press F8 during boot on older PCs) and run System Restore or a rescue scanner from a bootable antivirus image to fix corrupted associations or remove malware.

As and pointed toward hardware/firmware causes, those are valid checks — but when the optical route isn’t available, the Live-USB or direct-disk approach is the most reliable way to recover data and prepare the disk for a clean install. Always back up before formatting.

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Member Avatar for Arcnazgul

There are a few things you could try easiest would probably be throwing in a spare cd drive (if you have one) and try booting from that and if that fails you could always try formating from dos.

Member Avatar for Diello

I don't have a spare CD-drive, but how do I format from DOS? (I mean, I don't even know how to enter DOS...)

Member Avatar for cguan_77

hi diello,

you know how to get into the BIOS, configure the boot sequence options, to boot to cd where you're xp installer is placed, if the cd rom drive and installer is ok, everything will go smoothly. Assuming your drive and installer is ok, when you already set the configuration on the BIOS and the XP installer is on the drive,then upon system startup you'll receive a message "Press any key to boot from CD" just press a key then XP installer will try to load files to your Hard disk for the installation. Just follow the instruction on the screen to complete the process, if you need any help just post again..

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