[kenleeliew]

I have a 80GB hard drive partitioned into four parts. My sole OS, XP, lies on drive C, the primary partition. How can I format only the primary partition without affecting the rest? (in terms of its drive letter and all data in it) Can I use the bootable Windows XP disc to format as such? Or any other recommendations? tq

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Yes, you can reformat and reinstall XP on the primary partition w/o affecting your data files on the other partitions. You will need to reinstall any program software though. Set the BIOS to boot from CD, choose the correct partition when prompted and ignore the warnings about overwriting the existing OS install (because that is what you are trying to do). This link has screenshots of the whole process:
http://www.winsupers...xp_sg_clean.asp

Johanna

[Johanna]

Yes, you can reformat and reinstall XP on the primary partition w/o affecting your data files on the other partitions. You will need to reinstall any program software though. Set the BIOS to boot from CD, choose the correct partition when prompted and ignore the warnings about overwriting the existing OS install (because that is what you are trying to do). This link has screenshots of the whole process:
http://www.winsupers...xp_sg_clean.asp

Johanna

[RAz]

are you going to reinstall windows XP back??
if so you can format using the windows XP bootable CD
when reinstalling there is an option to select the partition were you want to install... you will see a partition table... select your primary partition and delete it (D key i think) ... then recreate it (C key) and it will be reformated...

or you can create a bootable floppy disk and boot the computer with it and at the command prompt type "format c:"

to create a bootable floppy disk just insert a disk in your floppy dirve go to windows explorer , right click on 3.5 Floppy (a:) and select format; check the "create ms dos startup disk" option and hit ok

[kenleeliew]

thanks guys for da advice.