[scf2510]

I am trying to refromat and reinstall windows xp on my computer but it is not letting me format the drive. On all my older pc's all i had to do was make a startup disk and type "format c:" in the dos prompt outside of windows. But with my comuter right now it just gives me the message "bad command or file name". Can anyone tell em what I am doing wrong?


oh yeah, I use FAT 32 file system

and my 2nd question is, Whats the difference between the fat 32 file system and the nfts(or whatever its called) file system?

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let me answer your first question, for windows XP you wouldn't need to start from bootup disks, you basically pop the CD in and boot from it, it would prompt your to format your HDD and even partition it if you want to. It would give you the choice of either FAT32 or NTFS and after it finishes formatting your drive it would carry on installing automatically.

Regarding your second question, NTFS and FAT32 are different in many ways. NTFS supports large HDD space I think in Terabytes, on the other hand FAT32 only supports i think (if not mistaken! correct me if I am wrong!) about 32GB so its a big difference there. Also and most imposrtant NTFS adds security to your data, with FAT32 you can specify permission on your files, on NTFS you can specify any permissions like just read or read/write etc.

I would always go for NTFS in the post 2000 domain, also to mention NTFS can access FAT32 partition and read files, but FAT32 can't access NTFS!

Hope I answered your questions.

[samiko]

let me answer your first question, for windows XP you wouldn't need to start from bootup disks, you basically pop the CD in and boot from it, it would prompt your to format your HDD and even partition it if you want to. It would give you the choice of either FAT32 or NTFS and after it finishes formatting your drive it would carry on installing automatically.

Regarding your second question, NTFS and FAT32 are different in many ways. NTFS supports large HDD space I think in Terabytes, on the other hand FAT32 only supports i think (if not mistaken! correct me if I am wrong!) about 32GB so its a big difference there. Also and most imposrtant NTFS adds security to your data, with FAT32 you can specify permission on your files, on NTFS you can specify any permissions like just read or read/write etc.

I would always go for NTFS in the post 2000 domain, also to mention NTFS can access FAT32 partition and read files, but FAT32 can't access NTFS!

Hope I answered your questions.

[scf2510]

ok thank you for your help.

[samiko]

you welcome