XP boot disks.

[lazerman]

I am helping my friend reformat her hdd because her computer has tons of viruses and basically crashes on startup. We are going to re-install Windows XP Home Edition. I need to make a boot disk, but I am on XP pro. Will it still work? Also I went to bootdisk.com and tried to make an xp home bootdisk but it asked for 6 disks. Is that right?

 

[perkoset]

is your friends comp so old that you cant just boot to a cd-rom? as for the boot disks that could be right i know NT4.0 took 3 disks so 6 for xp doesnt sound to far off

 

[HoLoCroN]

Six disks is about right, Windows NT needed 3, Windows 2000 needs 4 and XP, six.

But, I would boot it from the CD if possible, save yourself the time.

 

[lazerman]

Ok, does the disk contain the fdisk and format utilities?

 

[ekÆsine]

what you are not understanding is this is not win98/ME. FDISK and format are obsolete. winXP introduces a different way to do this.

 

[HoLoCroN]

Windows XP does not have seperate fdisk or format utilities, although the disks are able to format and partition a drive. If you want to partition a drive quickly or format a drive you can download a Windows 98 boot disk at www.bootdisk.com

 

[lazerman]

Ok, so I just use a windows 98 bootdisk to format and partition it?

 

[ekÆsine]

boot up with the winXP CD. the wizard will guide you through the partitioning and formatting. it's much easier than you realize. if you can't boot with CD use the winXP floppys

 

[lazerman]

It's a dell so how do they normally format it?

 

[jaun1477]

using 98 boot flopy formats in fat but it depends on how big is you hard drive
if you have a 80 gig it will need to be partition even if you dont have 2 o/s but with the disk it will do the intallation in one single partition