starting again!

[John Barnett - MVP]

Why must you "S" format the drive. As far as i am aware
the 'S' switch creates a startup disk and, as XP has a
bootable cd, i can't see what you would need the startup
disk for. To be honest i'm not even sure xp supports
the 'S' switch now. I know Microsoft removed it in
Millennium and i can't remember whether they put the 's'
switch back for xp or not.
I reinstall my operating system every 4 to 6 weeks due to
ebta test software distrupting the system and all i have
ever done is inserted the XP cd and let it run. When you
come to selecting a partition, select your C drive and
the next screen will ask whether you want to leave the
file system as it is or reformat. Simply choose to
reformat in either fat32 or ntfs. After formatting setup
will continue as normal.

Hope this helps

John Barnett - MVP
Associate Expert
>-----Original Message-----
>Hi,
>My sons computer running windows XP home keeps freezing
after only a few
>minutes use - I had the same on my PC and had to
reinstall windows XP.
>Looking at posts in the group to format and reinstall
you only need to
>reboot from the windows XP CD, However I have been told
by the vendor
>that I need to "S" format the hard drive, and this
cannot be done from
>the windows CD, to do this I need a boot disk. Is this
true, and can
>anyone direct me to a web site with any advise on how to
do this?
>Thanks for reading my post. Paul
>
>.
>

[Paul Johnson]

John,
Thanks for the reply.
I might have misheard him, searching the internet I found "FDISK" (S
format?) He told me this was the best way to reinstall windows XP.
Paul

John Barnett - MVP wrote:
> Why must you "S" format the drive.

[John Barnett - MVP]

Paul, like i said earlier the 'S' switch would make the
hard drive bootable, but this is basically windows 95/98
stuff - not xp. For that matter neither is Fdisk. XP
doesn't use Fdisk either. I can only assume that
your 'vendor' was relying upon you using Dos disks or a
windows 98/Me startup disk. This is ok if you have the
disks and you are also running a Fat32 file system. If
your system is already formatted as ntfs then you can
forget it, because Dos does not recognise ntfs file
partitions.
As Fdisk has been mentioned i can only assume he wants
you to delete the primary partition and then create a new
one. Once again, if you read the instructions on the
setup screen as you are installing XP you will have ample
opportunity to delete the partition and recreate a
partition, so, as i see it, fdisk, the 's' switch are all
superfluous to your requirements. Everything you need is
available from the windows xp setup.
What i will suggest is, that if you get into difficulty
email me direct at the email address above and i'll try
and help you through the process.

John Barnett - MVP
Associate Expert
>-----Original Message-----
>John,
>Thanks for the reply.
>I might have misheard him, searching the internet I
found "FDISK" (S
>format?) He told me this was the best way to reinstall
windows XP.
>Paul
>
>John Barnett - MVP wrote:
>> Why must you "S" format the drive.
>
>.
>

[Walter Clayton]

Actually the 98/SE (or prior) versions of fdisk and format shouldn't be used
on modern HDs. They break around 64G unless patched and at that have a hard
limit of 128G even when patched. The Me versions are fine up to around 512G
or so.

--
Walter Clayton - MS MVP(WinXP)
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
http://www.dts-l.org
http://support.microsoft.com/servicedesks/fileversion/default.asp


"John Barnett - MVP" > wrote in message
...
> Paul, like i said earlier the 'S' switch would make the
> hard drive bootable, but this is basically windows 95/98
> stuff - not xp. For that matter neither is Fdisk. XP
> doesn't use Fdisk either. I can only assume that
> your 'vendor' was relying upon you using Dos disks or a
> windows 98/Me startup disk. This is ok if you have the
> disks and you are also running a Fat32 file system. If
> your system is already formatted as ntfs then you can
> forget it, because Dos does not recognise ntfs file
> partitions.
> As Fdisk has been mentioned i can only assume he wants
> you to delete the primary partition and then create a new
> one. Once again, if you read the instructions on the
> setup screen as you are installing XP you will have ample
> opportunity to delete the partition and recreate a
> partition, so, as i see it, fdisk, the 's' switch are all
> superfluous to your requirements. Everything you need is
> available from the windows xp setup.
> What i will suggest is, that if you get into difficulty
> email me direct at the email address above and i'll try
> and help you through the process.
>
> John Barnett - MVP
> Associate Expert
> >-----Original Message-----
> >John,
> >Thanks for the reply.
> >I might have misheard him, searching the internet I
> found "FDISK" (S
> >format?) He told me this was the best way to reinstall
> windows XP.
> >Paul
> >
> >John Barnett - MVP wrote:
> >> Why must you "S" format the drive.
> >
> >.
> >