Reformatting Laptop

[hesson81]

I have an old Lap top that a friend of mine wants, I wanted to give it to him clean. I had it for years, it's full random stuff that i put on it.

I thought that if I re-installed windows it would take care of it. Windows XP Pro. I put the CD in and a list of about 5 options came up, I picked the first, I think it was "install windows". WOW. it took a long time, I mean like almost an hour or more. It completed, but the computer was just like I had seen it before.

Maybe that's not what I have to do. I thought reinstalling Windows would reformat the computer, bascially what I'm looking for is to take the system down to just window's and the programs it comes with, and wipe everything out on the hard drive.

Is reformatting not what I'm looking to do?? What do I do? Do you know what I'm trying to Say? Am I crazy? Okay, how bout stupid???

Thanks so much, Happy holiday's and or Merry Christmas......

 

[hikaricloud]

You need to boot from the Windows CD instead of going into the actual operating system. From there, you go through all the options and such. When you get to the partitions, delete the main one, then install in the empty space left behind. You can take it from there.

 

[veg1992]

Use KillDisk, and install Windows XP on it

or simply boot from the CD (use the BIOS)

 

[Beckman44]

Do not do this unless somebody agrees with me! But I THINK that you can format the C: through command prompt and reinstall windows.

 

[veg1992]

You don't have to do that... Boot with the XP CD, when it comes for setup time, you delete the partition of the HD, rebuild it, and it'll automatically format and let it install

 

[hesson81]

aaaahhhhhh, this is all starting to sound familiar. So Rebuliding the partition after I delete the main Partition is fairly user friendly?? I won't run into a dead end, pretty stupid friendly??

Thanks again...

 

[veg1992]

Yes, it'll be fine.. hit D or w/e it is to delete the partition, then hit enter on the non-created partition or w/e it is.. it'll build it on its own, format and install

 

[hesson81]

Rebooted from the XP as recomended, worked like a charm. It's amazing what a clean computer will do. It's an old inspiron Pentium 4 with about 320 MB of Memory, and it ran fast after the reformatt.

Thanks for your help.