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Reformat hard drive upon installation

Started by Novice3303 , May 21 2005 08:52 AM

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#1
Novice3303
Posted 21 May 2005 - 08:52 AM

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I have a Dell Dimension 8100 which formerly had Windows Millenium. I had many problems with performance and many "conflicting" programs. I wanted to wipe everything out and load Windows XP. I followed the directions for a new installation, took the opportunity to change from FAT32 to a new file system, and saw all the warnings about erasing all teh existing data. I continued because I wanted to erase all the existing data. Following the installation, it all appeared fine and worked okay. When I clicked Start>Programs, I was rewarded by a minimal list. I then looked in the C drive under programs, and all the old folders and files are still there. I even opened a program that I had experienced difficulty with (Adobe). It did just like it did before I did anything. I looked in Control Panel>Add/remove programs. None of the old programs are listed there, but they sure are in the C drive when I go into Windows Explorer.

How do I get rid of the old stuff? I don't want to just start deleting files and folders. Thanks.
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#2
austin_o
Posted 21 May 2005 - 09:09 AM

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I had ME on a compaq that I put W2K pro on. It had a partition set up for the ME restore, drive D. When I formatted and installed W2K I selected NTFS, installed and all was great. It did not remove the D partition however. It was still there and is formatted FAT32. Maybe that is what you are seeing? I find it hard to believe that formatting and installing WXP would leave all of the ME files intact on drive C....mind you I am not saying it could NOT happen, just want you to check again and make sure.
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#3
Novice3303
Posted 21 May 2005 - 10:09 AM

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I had a C and D drive. I did not intend to reformat the D drive. I used it for document storage only. The C drive is NTFS File system. The D drive is still FAT32 File system. What I am looking at is "My Computer" and actually opening a folder of C:\Program Files. Within that folder are all the old program folders with hundreds of individual files within them, including application files, app extension files, and dll files. The D drive shows all the old documents that were intended to be left on.
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#4
patdied
Posted 19 May 2007 - 07:53 PM

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All you need to do is reformat at the start.

1) Put windows CD in your cd drive
2) Restart computer
3) At start (the first screen you see) hold F10 to go to boot menu
4) select boot from cd/dvd
5) in the setup select reformat and follow the instuctions

Basicly, you can't format properly in windows, all your doing is re-installing windows parts.
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