[bogged]

Hello everyone. I am computer illiterate.

I have a 30 gig hard drive that is running win 98. I would like to wipe it clean and put XP on it. I have booted the PC up with the XP disk in it and begun to install XP but then I got confused and stopped. So I need some help.

When installing I got to a screen that said something like...
Unpartitioned 7000MB
Unpartitioned 1000MB
C: Partioned 20000MB

(now I'm quite sure that when the hard drive was first installed with win98, the PC couldn't handle the full 30 gig so the tech partitioned it to a smaller amount of GB. I want to format and load XP so that I get rid of all the partitions and get the full 30 gig)..... I'm well out of my depth here so I hope you understand what I mean.

Also, at this point of installation, it was asking something about FAT 32/ NTSC formatting, I think. I didn't understand this so I just quit out of the installation.

So could someone give me step by step instructions to...
Formatting the HD so there are no partitions and
Loading XP.

Thanks for any help, this site and you guys are great,
Wayne.

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Download something called DBAN, just Google for DBAN +download to find it. Install it to a floppy, or CD if you don't have a floppy, and use it to completely write the drive to zeros. That will get rid of all the old partitions and any funny stuff and you can start with a basically new drive.

[Tyger]

Download something called DBAN, just Google for DBAN +download to find it. Install it to a floppy, or CD if you don't have a floppy, and use it to completely write the drive to zeros. That will get rid of all the old partitions and any funny stuff and you can start with a basically new drive.

[Ztruker]

Hi bogged, welcome.

What you need to do is delete all existing partitions during the XP install. You do this by selecting a partition and pressing the D key and responding as needed. Repeat for all partitions.

Once that is done, enter C to create a new partition using the full hard drive (8MB is usually not included, that's normal). When the new partition is created, you select it and press Enter to begin the XP install. Format it as NTFS.

One question. Are you sure your computer is XP compatible? Did you run the Compatibility checker off the XP CD first? What about XP device drivers for your existing hardware? Since it's an older computer that was running Win98, it's quite likely that XP will not have all the necessary drivers.

Edited by Ztruker, 23 February 2008 - 06:51 PM.

[bogged]

Thanks for the info everyone. I think I can handle it from here.

Ztruker, regarding your question, originally I do/I did have a computer that was running xp. It's hard drive decided to stop working yesterday.
So I got my older win98 computer out of the cupboard and am currently using it. It's the one with the 30GB hard drive.

I understand what you mean by trying to get XP onto the Win98 hard drive, if the motherboard etc. can't handle it.

So I might swap the win98 hard drive into the newer pc first (the one that recently had XP running on it) and then do the xp installation..... Does that sound okay??

Thanks again everyone. This site and the people on it, and the effort they all put in is great.

Wayne.

[Ztruker]

Wayne, sounds like you have nothing to lose

You can almost always find drivers for mother board chip sets and other hardware on the net but it often takes a lot of searching. The best repository by far is DriverGuide.com.

Give it a whirl and if you have any problems post back here and we may be able to help.

Good luck.