I'm running Windows XP. I want to format my main C drive and reinstall windows to get rid of all traces of a program that has been giving us trouble.
I went into setup and set the CDrom as the boot drive and booted off the Win XP installation disk. But it still started my regular installation of Windows. I was able to run setup but after reinstalling Windows and a new version of my problem program it still found traces of the old version during installation. It doesn't appear that this method is actually formatting my HD just reinstalling windows on top of the earlier installation.
So what can I use to boot from the CDrom and actually format the HD? I miss the simple days of floppys and FAT.

Either you need to do a new installation, or you can simply boot into the CMOS and wipe the drive....re-start and re-identify the drive in CMos, then it will be all clean...

Format way...

And if you like, XP does not require NTFS.

Rich

During installation I chose new, not upgrade. It still left some traces behind. Sorry, I don't understand booting into Cmos to wipe the drive clean. I may be trying to sound like I know what I'm doing, but I know nothing. The only reason I mentioned missing FAT is I used to have floppy utility disks I'd use to format the HD when I needed but they don't work with NTFS and I don't have a floppy drive anymore anyway.

Do not forget to format fat32 and ntsf on your hard drive if you do a new reinstall, ntsf does not like fat32 anymore, fat32 will hang in there on your hard drive if you do not format it out.. I hate windows.. mac's rule..

You have to go into setup in your bios (usually an F-key press during the first screen during bootup) and disable the HD as a boot option. Then it will force it to actually boot off the cd. You can then mess with formatting and partitions using the menus that come up when booting off the CD. (If you have a dell or other such "preprocessed" computer you can get rid of the extra partitions and make your system drive use its full capacity by deleting all the partitions and then making one new partition that uses the whole drive)

Don't just set the cdrom to a higher boot priority than the hard drive, sometimes it will still boot off the hard drive.

Good info from the others. You may want to do this:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/528/create_...ndows_xp_cd_rom
Print is blocked on site. Copy all the info you see and paste into notepad. Print what you pasted in notepad. It's about 1 1/2 pages but tells exactly what you need to know in detail.
There is some content that wants a donation. NEVER give your email address on these places. The spam may be very heavy. Want to donate to them for the cd or whatever, use snail mail to send to them. IMHO, I wouldn't donate until I saw that it worked for you.

what type of computer do you have?
Make, model, year. (every bios is different)

We can walk you through the BIOS setup screen.
This is not a place you want to mess up....read every screen carefully.
Make sure you save on the way out.

Rich

Thanks for the suggestions. I did set all three boot options as CD and it still opened my Windows installation instead of going straight into the CD disk. I'll try the recipe on the link from Cooltimes. My computer was custom built at a shop, it's only 1 year old and was the best at the time, so it's not an old clunker. I might check Fry's to see if anyone makes a utility disk to simplify it. This shouldn't be that difficult.

when you boot up the computer with the CD in the drive, does it flash a message at the top of the screen "press any key to boot from CD" followed by some dots "....." that progress across for like 8 or 10 maybe? If you don't hit a key at this point, you won't launch the CD.

You don't have to go into the BIOS or CMOS to format the drive. You can do it within the XP setup.

First get to where you are booting to the XP setup CD..... then I can help you get the hard drive formated.

-Mike

try this.

you need to cold boot, that is shut it down using the power switch.
When it starts, hold down these keys, one at a time.
Each time shut down cold boot.

Delete
F1
F9-12
Try each one, cold booting each time to see which one gets you into the BIOS setup screen.

Rich