# Help: format on XP Home?
**URL:** https://forum.kirupa.com/t/help-format-on-xp-home/38897
**Category:** random
**Created:** [December 31, 2003, 9:39am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/help-format-on-xp-home/38897 "2003-12-31T09:39:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@eyezberg](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/eyezberg)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2003, 9:39am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/help-format-on-xp-home/38897/1 "2003-12-31T09:39:41Z")
Ok, so I tried again to reinstall stupid XP on this stupid Dell, lol, but I never get the option to FORMAT C first to get rid of the Dell crap and make a clean new install, anyone knows how to?
Thx
(installing from dvd drive straight from win cd with xp already installed, so the delete/format or whatever partition options don’t become available, and i don’t have a boot floppy…)
Urgent pls, want to get this done b4 new year 🙂
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2003, 10:01am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/help-format-on-xp-home/38897/2 "2003-12-31T10:01:58Z")
Don’t you get a few cd’s in the beginning? I my dell i had to make a few cd’s when i got my pc. I can insert them in the startup of my pc.
I do have to go to the bios and set one of my cd roms as primary. They i just click install. on the install screen wich i get after putting in the the cds and started up.
because when you install you format before you can instal.
but i got rid of my dell. Because it was to slo.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2003, 11:34am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/help-format-on-xp-home/38897/3 "2003-12-31T11:34:42Z")
heh… I wanted to do exactly the same thing when I got my PC, and I had problems as well.
Make sure you’re actually booting off the CD, not of the hard drive. My problem was that it was loading from the WinXP bootloader, not directly off the CD.
Try going into the bios and messing around with that, as T-O suggested.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2003, 3:33pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/help-format-on-xp-home/38897/4 "2003-12-31T15:33:51Z")
> \*Originally posted by eyezberg \*
> \*\*Ok, so I tried again to reinstall stupid XP on this stupid Dell, lol, but I never get the option to FORMAT C first to get rid of the Dell crap and make a clean new install, anyone knows how to?
> Thx
> (installing from dvd drive straight from win cd with xp already installed, so the delete/format or whatever partition options don’t become available, and i don’t have a boot floppy…)
Urgent pls, want to get this done b4 new year 🙂 \*\*
What I always do is install this program called ‘Partition Magic 7’, you can get a shareware version of it somewhere, you really don’t even need the full version for this. From there, you can tell it to format C to NTFS, hit apply, restart, and it’ll format your hard drive for you.
I’ve used this method for about every format I’ve done, no failures yet.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2003, 4:26pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/help-format-on-xp-home/38897/5 "2003-12-31T16:26:21Z")
What T-O said. Eyez, I think you would have received a red disk that says “Reinstalling Windows XP” or something similar to that. Insert the CD and tell the BIOS to boot from your CD. The directions should tell you how to format. I am not sure, but you have to first delete the partition and then simply do a quick format and install NTFS :block:
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2003, 11:01pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/help-format-on-xp-home/38897/6 "2003-12-31T23:01:02Z")
well its good only if u have a hp comp,
has its own formatting program inbuilt instead of having to use the xp cd itself. And thats not a strong point about hp, they give u no xp cd, files are on hd so it eats up some of your initial gb’s
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2004, 3:55am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/help-format-on-xp-home/38897/7 "2004-01-01T03:55:38Z")
I partian disks with Linux Redhat, then quit half-way during installation, then format with Windows 2k disk, and then install Windows XP from my Sony CD’s… because they don’t let you partion.
Maybe you can do something similar?
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2004, 8:34am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/help-format-on-xp-home/38897/8 "2004-01-01T08:34:00Z")
Folks, thanks for everything, in fact with XP installed, you never got a format option, just reinstall or repair etc, so in the end, i used an old win98 boot floppy, deleted the C partition, then rebooted on the XP cd and that’s it; format install done (well, almost, had a COM+ error during install, so had to repair-install again… DOH!!!)
I’m back anyway… too bad for you,hehe 😉