12-29-2009, 04:11 PM
How to format a drive and partition it using windows xp.
All backups etc are your responsibility and this tut does not cover that.
Sorry about the poor quality pics.
1) Start pc and hit Delete repeatedly during the first stage of bios boot and this will bring up your bios screen similar to pic below.
2) Choose the Advanced BIOS Features tab.
3) Made sure you have CDROM selected as the First Boot Device like pic below.
4) Insert your XP disk into rom before you reboot.
5) Hit F10 and then y then hit enter and your system will save bios setup and reboot.
6) now as you see below it will want to boot off cd. Now once it detects it you will need to hit a key to initiate it or it will boot of harddisk. So simply hit any key.
7) You will see a Welcome to Setup screen. Just hit enter there and go on.
8) Some silly Windows XP Licence Agreement now. Just hit F8 and continue.
9) Now we are at the Partition screen. Yep just where we want to be.
(Now in my pic you will see i have 2 partitions already and there both unknown. Well there linux partitions. What your seeing is / and a swap.)
10) Now we will delete both of them now for the tut purpose. To do this you select either one of the partitions and hit D.
Now it will ask you to make sure essentially. Hit Enter now to confirm deletion of this partition.
11) Now windows being stupid and wants to confirm again. Now hit L.
12) Now we will see 1 partition with no location and marked Unpartitioned space.
13) Lets do the same now for the second partition. Now once we remove this partition it will create 1 single Unpartitioned space.
On the second partition because it was not an active partition it did not require the additional "are you sure bullshit"
So now we have 1 single space unpartitioned.
Lets partition it.
14) Start by selecting the single space and hitting C.
Now we will see an option to create our partition of a size of your choice.
Lets choose any size for the purpose of the tut.
15) Lets do the same for the next partiton now. We will use the remaining space for the second partition as we dont want wasted space on our drive we cant access.
Now you will see 3 partitions. 2 we just created and 1 which is 8MB in size.
Leave this there as its needed windows files.
Guess what? Partition done.
Now you are ready to install an OS onto either partition.
Once again sorry about the poor quality pics.
All backups etc are your responsibility and this tut does not cover that.
Sorry about the poor quality pics.
1) Start pc and hit Delete repeatedly during the first stage of bios boot and this will bring up your bios screen similar to pic below.
2) Choose the Advanced BIOS Features tab.
3) Made sure you have CDROM selected as the First Boot Device like pic below.
4) Insert your XP disk into rom before you reboot.
5) Hit F10 and then y then hit enter and your system will save bios setup and reboot.
6) now as you see below it will want to boot off cd. Now once it detects it you will need to hit a key to initiate it or it will boot of harddisk. So simply hit any key.
7) You will see a Welcome to Setup screen. Just hit enter there and go on.
8) Some silly Windows XP Licence Agreement now. Just hit F8 and continue.
9) Now we are at the Partition screen. Yep just where we want to be.
(Now in my pic you will see i have 2 partitions already and there both unknown. Well there linux partitions. What your seeing is / and a swap.)
10) Now we will delete both of them now for the tut purpose. To do this you select either one of the partitions and hit D.
Now it will ask you to make sure essentially. Hit Enter now to confirm deletion of this partition.
11) Now windows being stupid and wants to confirm again. Now hit L.
12) Now we will see 1 partition with no location and marked Unpartitioned space.
13) Lets do the same now for the second partition. Now once we remove this partition it will create 1 single Unpartitioned space.
On the second partition because it was not an active partition it did not require the additional "are you sure bullshit"
So now we have 1 single space unpartitioned.
Lets partition it.
14) Start by selecting the single space and hitting C.
Now we will see an option to create our partition of a size of your choice.
Lets choose any size for the purpose of the tut.
15) Lets do the same for the next partiton now. We will use the remaining space for the second partition as we dont want wasted space on our drive we cant access.
Now you will see 3 partitions. 2 we just created and 1 which is 8MB in size.
Leave this there as its needed windows files.
Guess what? Partition done.
Now you are ready to install an OS onto either partition.
Once again sorry about the poor quality pics.