uninstalling/reinstalling WinXP?

[D]

I have two hard drives: one at C: (my 'main' HD, where my
WinXp has always existed) and a second one at F:. Both
(and my computer) are about a year old. Recently it's
been getting so bogged down and buggy that I've decided
that I want to reformat and reinstall everything.

After backing up my files externally, I couldn't find a
way to uninstall my Windows on C, and I didn't want to
just format C: without taking care of that first. So I
formatted F: and installed Windows there.

Now everything on F: is going well, but when I try to
format C: from my Windows on F:, it always fails. And I
still can't find any way to uninstall any previous
installations of Windows.

Anyone have any ideas that might help? Thanks!

[Phil \(purplehaz\)]

You do not uninstall windows. To clean the drive of windows you format it.
Uninstall windows = format.
You should have just formatted the c drive and installed xp. Booting to the
xp cd would have done this for you.
To format the c drive now and keep your xp on the f drive, boot to a win9x
floppy boot disk and use fdisk and format to get rid of xp on drive c.
Possibly a repair install of xp may be needed after doing this.

D wrote:
> I have two hard drives: one at C: (my 'main' HD, where my
> WinXp has always existed) and a second one at F:. Both
> (and my computer) are about a year old. Recently it's
> been getting so bogged down and buggy that I've decided
> that I want to reformat and reinstall everything.
>
> After backing up my files externally, I couldn't find a
> way to uninstall my Windows on C, and I didn't want to
> just format C: without taking care of that first. So I
> formatted F: and installed Windows there.
>
> Now everything on F: is going well, but when I try to
> format C: from my Windows on F:, it always fails. And I
> still can't find any way to uninstall any previous
> installations of Windows.
>
> Anyone have any ideas that might help? Thanks!

[Phil \(purplehaz\)]

Ya setup will do that, cause you already started the process setup files are
now on your drive so it won't format it. You'll need to get the computer to
boot to the win9x floppy. When the computer boots look for info on how to
enter setup(the bios). Once in the bios look for boot order(or similar) and
set the a drive to first boot device. Then try booting to the win9x floppy
and running fdisk. Then delete partitons, create new ones, reboot to floppy,
run format c:

D wrote:
> Ahhh ok, thanks for the info, I guess I don't know nearly as much as
> I thought...
>
> I made a win98 boot disk, but my computer refuses to boot from it -
> instead it just takes me to the OS selection screen.
> I tried running fdisk off the disk from Windows (maybe that's a very
> silly thing to do, I don't know) but that didn't do much either
>
> I popped my WinXP install CD back in hoping to do a new install over
> the old one. But when I told it to format drive C, it
> said that it couldn't, because there were some crucial setup files
> present. I suppose that could be possible, so I tried again, making
> sure to direct the setup files to the F drive, but it still wouldn't
> let me format C :(
>
> Any new ideas? Thanks again for the help, it's much appreciated!
>
> ----- Phil (purplehaz) wrote: -----
>
> You do not uninstall windows. To clean the drive of windows you
> format it. Uninstall windows = format.
> You should have just formatted the c drive and installed xp.
> Booting to the xp cd would have done this for you.
> To format the c drive now and keep your xp on the f drive, boot
> to a win9x floppy boot disk and use fdisk and format to get rid
> of xp on drive c. Possibly a repair install of xp may be needed
> after doing this.
>
> D wrote:
> > I have two hard drives: one at C: (my 'main' HD, where my
> > WinXp has always existed) and a second one at F:. Both
> > (and my computer) are about a year old. Recently it's
> > been getting so bogged down and buggy that I've decided
> > that I want to reformat and reinstall everything.
> >> After backing up my files externally, I couldn't find a
> > way to uninstall my Windows on C, and I didn't want to
> > just format C: without taking care of that first. So I
> > formatted F: and installed Windows there.
> >> Now everything on F: is going well, but when I try to
> > format C: from my Windows on F:, it always fails. And I
> > still can't find any way to uninstall any previous
> > installations of Windows.
> >> Anyone have any ideas that might help? Thanks!