Reformating without installing windows???

[protecters touch]

Okay I feel like a nubb for having to ask this but here goes. So my system currently had two hard drives in it which over the last year accumulated a lot of old data and slowly became jumbled with data. This being said I figured it was time to reformat them both. At the current point in time I have windows freashly installed and working properly with all my drivers on my 80gig sata1. The problem lies in my second 250gig sata1 drive. I went to reformat it using the windowsXP service pack two disc I have and all went fine except for one tiny problem it installed windows on that disc two without asking me first. It does this after formating the partition every time. So I load my good working version of windows up right click on the drive and tell it to format while im in windows. That all goes well but for some odd reason my comp still thinks it has two versions of windows on the go. What do I need to do to compleltly whipe the second drive clean to the point where it forgets about windows ever existing on that drive?

 

[commandercup]

right click the drive in my computer and click format, NTFS

0_0

or you can use a partition manager in a live CD or download partition magic

 

[Brinson]

or use command line: format D:

or whatever drive letter it is.

 

[protecters touch]

Okay I did the right click option earlier but that didnt work. I am formatting it again right now using the windows run command I hope that works.

 

[carnageX]

If not try: Right click on My Computer > manage > Disk Management > Find the drive in the bottom section > try to format from there.

And if THAT, doesn't work... There's always KillDisk or Boon 'n Nuke =).

 

[Brinson]

or you could just ctrl + a then hit the delete key

 

[protecters touch]

lol control delete will restart my comp not format the drive nice try though. Besides everyone know alt+f4 fixes all problems!!!!

 

[superdave1984]

ctrl + A selects all files/folders. Then hitting the delete key deletes them all. Alt + F4 just closes the open window. Download killdisk and put it on a floppy. Boot to the floppy. Format whatever drive you want.

 

[Brinson]

lol control delete will restart my comp not format the drive nice try though. Besides everyone know alt+f4 fixes all problems!!!!

that is ctrl + alt + del and it has to be hit twice in a row with a gap between them to restart. One brings up the very useful task manager where you can monitor system resources and processes.

 

[protecters touch]

Okay so I figured something out apparently when it did install files to prepare to set up windows on the second drive it also put a mark at the very start of the drive to let my comp know windows was there. I have reformatted using my working windows on my first hard drive twice now and it does not get rid of that marker. I have yet to try a few programs that people have mentioned on here but I want to ask if anyone knows for sure if one of them does indeed erase the marker windows installer left at point 0.0 on the second hard drive.