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Reformat Your Hard Drive with Windows XP

quinlanblogger | Aug 4, 2010 |

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Reformatting your hard drive can be useful for a variety of reasons. Whether you have noticed your computer running slowly, or you have run out of storage space, reformatting your hard drive can help you overcome these issues.

Before you reformat your hard drive, it will be important to backup any information that you do not want to lose. Consider how you use your computer to ensure that nothing is overlooked in this process. Backup any documents in your "My Documents" folder, any favorites you might rely on, email and items on your desktop.

It is also a good idea to take make a list of the programs you currently have installed on your computer. You can use this list to make sure you have the software you need to reinstall each of these programs once you have completed the formatting process. Also remember to locate any device drivers you may need.

Once you are ready to begin the reformatting process, power down your computer. Place your Windows XP disc into your disc drive and turn the computer back on. Watch the screen carefully at this point. You will see a prompt that reads "Press any key to boot from CD." In order to setoff the process, just hit a key!

A setup guide will appear. You will be prompted to hit the enter key in order to continue. This may take some time as the setup guide will gather the files it needs to continue.

Once the setup guide has analyzed your computer, you will see a list of partitions that are on your hard drive. In order for you to reformat your hard drive and install a fresh copy of Windows XP, you will need to remove the partition. For most users, the C partition will be the target of your reformat. Select the correct partition and hit enter to continue. You will then be asked to confirm that you want to get rid of the partition.

Once you are free of the partition, the setup guide will return you to the screen listing the available partitions on your computer. You will notice that there is now an option that designates hard drive space that is not partitioned. Select this and press enter to continue.

From here, the setup guide will begin to reformat your partition. You will be given an option to choose which type of file system you want to use. It is advisable to select NTFS as it provides users with more advanced functionality and is more secure than FAT32. Once the reformatting process has been completed, the setup guide will begin to reinstall Windows XP. Depending on the specs of your computer, this process could take some time.