Problems reformatting

[macdawg]

I am reformatting my roommates computer because it has tons of viruses on it that have spread all over his computer.

Windows will not boot from CD, it never says press any key to reinstall windows when it boots up.

When I try to run the CD to reinstall windows I get this error: Setup cannot continue because the version of Windows on your computer is newer than the version on the CD.

Microsofts website isn't really helping too much. It's telling me to go to start - run - type in something but I get errors when I use that too

Anyone know a way around this?

Thanks.

 

[bigstanklo]

The path i would take in your situation is the following (if possible). Take the hard drive out of your roomates computer, connect it to your or another available computer as a secondary storage drive and then perform the reformat of the drive that way. Then install the newly formatted drive back in your roomates computer and try the install from CD procedure again. I had a very similar experience with my cousins computer about a week ago and this method worked fine for me.

 

[macdawg]

thanks for the response, any other solutions that would be easier?

Is there a way for me just to completely delete windows so it won't be an error from installing a previous version?

I'm just afraid if I do that & my disk still won't boot then I'll be screwed.

 

[EricB]

use powermax in my signature to wipe the drive. then reinstall windows

xp sp2 won't let you reinstall any previous version. it will put something in your mbr to not let you do it

 

[Osiris]

Or a Windows 98 bootdisk will work.

www.bootdisk.com

 

[macdawg]

I'm getting frustrated and about to tell him to take it somewhere.

I've burned powermax on a disk and that also will not boot up when I restart the computer.

 

[EricB]

got to your bios and set it to boot to cd first

 

[Tro1086]

well from reading what you typed it sounds like your not even headed in the right direction. Simply booting from the windows CD and reinstalling dosnt erase your hard drive, all its gona do is reinstall windows, and that not gona help shit. If it wont let you boot from the CD because of diffrent versions. Try making a floopy boot disk. I dont know about XP but in ME to make a floopy boot disk all you do is go to Control Panel, open the Add/Remove Programs thing, then click the tab called 'Startup Disk'. It may be a little diffrent in XP thou.

Once you have the floopy, make sure in the Bios its set to boot from floopy first and then HDD. Then put the floopy in and start the computer, it will ask you if you want to boot with CD support and say yes since you will be installing windows from the CD after the format is done. Then after a little churning it will come up with the A:> prompt and all you do to format is type 'format c:', something like that, cant remember if thats exactly it. This will COMPLETELY erase the HD thou, so make sure you really want to do that and anything you want to keep like music files or something is backed up somewhere OFF of that drive.

Ok well that might not work for you, thats how you would do it for Win 9x/ME. But iv never used XP and I think XP is compeletly diffrent from that. But if its not letting you boot from the CD because of two diffrent versions, can you make a bootable floopy in XP? If you make a bootable floopy off the computer your trying to fix you know its the right version.

Or like someone else said, it would probably be easiest to just take the HD out and stick it in a good computer as a secondary and format it and install windows and then put it back in your friends computer.

But from what I can tell it sounds like your just REinstalling windows, and thats gona do absolutely nothing besides wasteing a lot of time. You need to formate/erase the drive first before installing windows again.

 

[EricB]

well from reading what you typed it sounds like your not even headed in the right direction. Simply booting from the windows CD and reinstalling dosnt erase your hard drive, all its gona do is reinstall windows, and that not gona help shit. If it wont let you boot from the CD because of diffrent versions. Try making a floopy boot disk. I dont know about XP but in ME to make a floopy boot disk all you do is go to Control Panel, open the Add/Remove Programs thing, then click the tab called 'Startup Disk'. It may be a little diffrent in XP thou.

Once you have the floopy, make sure in the Bios its set to boot from floopy first and then HDD. Then put the floopy in and start the computer, it will ask you if you want to boot with CD support and say yes since you will be installing windows from the CD after the format is done. Then after a little churning it will come up with the A:> prompt and all you do to format is type 'format c:', something like that, cant remember if thats exactly it. This will COMPLETELY erase the HD thou, so make sure you really want to do that and anything you want to keep like music files or something is backed up somewhere OFF of that drive.

Ok well that might not work for you, thats how you would do it for Win 9x/ME. But iv never used XP and I think XP is compeletly diffrent from that. But if its not letting you boot from the CD because of two diffrent versions, can you make a bootable floopy in XP? If you make a bootable floopy off the computer your trying to fix you know its the right version.

Or like someone else said, it would probably be easiest to just take the HD out and stick it in a good computer as a secondary and format it and install windows and then put it back in your friends computer.

But from what I can tell it sounds like your just REinstalling windows, and thats gona do absolutely nothing besides wasteing a lot of time. You need to formate/erase the drive first before installing windows again.

it will take powermax 10 seconds to do this

 

[Tro1086]

Is Powermax made by Maxtor? From what i could figure it looks like its kinda the same thing that came with a new Seagate HD i bought. I never used the Seagate software thou. Well not the bootable floppy part anyway, i used Seagates software to copy my old HD onto the new one and use the new one as the master.