# Reformat
**URL:** https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332
**Category:** random
**Created:** [March 23, 2003, 8:47pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332 "2003-03-23T20:47:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@nobody](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/nobody)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:47pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/1 "2003-03-23T20:47:04Z")
How do you reformat your hard drive on Windows XP just outta curiousity?
I lost the cd that came with my comp that had XP stuff on it, so is there another way to do it?
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:49pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/2 "2003-03-23T20:49:32Z")
you could use dos to format, but formatting wipes everything on the hard drive.
in xp, you can also go to my computer and then right click on the hdd you want to wipe. the one you’re wiping cannot be the one that has the operating system on it.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:50pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/3 "2003-03-23T20:50:57Z")
Uhhhh… what?
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:51pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/4 "2003-03-23T20:51:45Z")
you need to have the Windows CD so you can reinstall windows once you reformat. Reformatting cleans everything off of the harddrive, including the OS
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:52pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/5 "2003-03-23T20:52:49Z")
are you formatting the computer you’re on now?
What Hojo is saying, is that in My Computer, you right-click and go
to Manage. Then go to Disk Management.
If the Drive you are formatting is NOT your system partition, then
you can format it right there.
Otherwise, you’re gonna need a DOS boot-disk with FDisk on it.
=)
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:53pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/6 "2003-03-23T20:53:05Z")
but…but… crap… that means I gotta look for like an hour for the stupid disk… but last time i did the reformat thing through the disk, nothing happened, it took 3 hours and everything was still there… so what do i do, wipe out my hd… then I just pop the cd in?
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:53pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/7 "2003-03-23T20:53:30Z")
yes, reformatting means EVERYTHING. Totally blank, 100% wiped.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:53pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/8 "2003-03-23T20:53:37Z")
If you don’t have a good idea what you are doing… don’t…
It isn’t difficult, but you can lose everything on that computer. Including Windows XP…
There are books, websites, tutorials on how to do it, but read first…
Rev 
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:54pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/9 "2003-03-23T20:54:34Z")
yeah… i dont wanna lose everything, can someone point me out to a good tut or something…?
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:54pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/10 "2003-03-23T20:54:54Z")
you didn’t reformat…you re-installed.
TOTALLY different. Re-installing doesn’t overwrite or erase your
HD first. Mos times, when you do a re0install with the same OS
over top of the old one, it leaves stuff there, and all that was
updated or replaced is the OS files.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:55pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/11 "2003-03-23T20:55:42Z")
There are tons of articles on google…
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:55pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/12 "2003-03-23T20:55:46Z")
if that’s all you need, then find your disk. Otherwise, as REv said:
don’t do it.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:56pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/13 "2003-03-23T20:56:04Z")
Ohhhh… well that would explain why that did absolutely nothing…
lol… it’s depressing how much I suck at doin this kind of stuff…
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:57pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/14 "2003-03-23T20:57:33Z")
besides all that, if you don’t have the XP disk, you can’t re-install
or reformat anyway because of the Activation they require.
Without the same cd it’s going to ask you to do all that again. If
you don’t, 30-days it shuts you down until you do.
Anti-piracy basically.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 8:59pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/15 "2003-03-23T20:59:45Z")
If you want to just delete everything - after having backed up what you need than do this.
go into your bios - make your cd rom your primary boot device.
put your windows XP cd in the tray.
Reboot your machine and press the any key to boot from the cd 😉
Select that you want to install windows xp
It will tell you that it’s not safe to install two os’s on the same partition but say continue anyway
it will ask you to format your drive, elect the ntsf format and make sure it’s not the quick one.
your computer will format - reboot and then dont press anything when it askes you to boot from the cd and windows will begin installing it’s self.
Like I said though - thtat’s if you want to get rid of EVERYTHING minus your primary dos partitions.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 9:00pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/16 "2003-03-23T21:00:23Z")
Well I have to go to work now… but I wanna play with my computer… dang it…
If anyone wants to keep puttin information into this thread for me I’d really appreciate it.
Thanks a lot:beam:
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 9:08pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/17 "2003-03-23T21:08:54Z")
when you say you want to reformat, i have a couple of questions:
1. how many hdds do you have in your computer?
2. if its only 1, why do you want to format? is there something wrong? do you just want to start over?
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 9:14pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/18 "2003-03-23T21:14:58Z")
sometimes your comp is bundled with a ‘recovery cd’ which reinstall the OP without f\*\*\*ing your files…
I dont know if you have one though…
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2003, 9:17pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/19 "2003-03-23T21:17:59Z")
chances are mlk, that the probs you are having will not be solved with a restore disc.
Rev 
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### Author:  [@system](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2003, 1:44am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/reformat/16332/20 "2003-03-24T01:44:21Z")
hojo: I Just have way way too much crap on my comp and want to start clean… still lookin for what to do… thanks so far guys
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