Formatting C Drive on Windows XP

[thomjonz]

Hi everyone.
I have a pc running windows xp and I want to reformat the drive and install windows 98.
I was given this machine and it is really slow. I don't think it has the resources for xp. Anyways, I have tried to format the c drive and have been stopped by xp. How do I do this?

 

[TheMajor]

You can use the XP disc to format to FAT32.

 

[ph@ntom]

yea, u cant format c drive WHILE running XP because XP is on the c drive and it cant format itself..
ur best chice is to stick to TheMajor's advice

 

[Inaris]

be warned, you can only create a 32gb fat32 partition in winXP...
at least I think that is the size. It is limited though...
Just so you know...

 

[ph@ntom]

an alternative would be NTFS where a partition is 100 or 120 meg

 

[TheMajor]

true, XP can only create FAT32 partitions up to 32GB, though FAT32 itsself is limited to 8TB.
The maximum NTFS volume size XP can create is 256TB i think.

 

[thomjonz]

Thanks for the replies.

I am now thinking of installing windows 98 on this machine without deleting xp. How would I do this so that the machine boots up to windows 98 and doesn't do anything with the xp?

 

[Pavlyk]

F*** XP discs. Man if you want to do it the clean way, do it from dos. Boot from a boot diskette and input the proper parameters. It's the best way to do it.

 

[sPlAtOiD]

Windows 98 Boot disk format C:
Pretty Easy.

 

[ChaosBlizzard]

true, XP can only create FAT32 partitions up to 32GB, though FAT32 itsself is limited to 8TB.
The maximum NTFS volume size XP can create is 256TB i think.

So you have a HD that is this large?

BTW- Boot into dos and type in "format C: /q". That will format the drive using the quick way. You could switch to Windows 2000, that is better than XP anyway. XP was developed for older people who need a little "help" with using a computer.