Hi, I’m helping a friend with his laptop. He had lots of weird stuff happening and his wife and kid both use the laptop as well. So we have a limited idea of how any problems occurred.
We want to do a reinstall of windows xp but I am concerned because there is a partition on the computer that he says wasn’t there originally. I don’t remember it and I cleaned it up for him last year.
How can I completely wipe the laptop and reinstall xp but eliminate the partition as well?
Tagged with: laptop • partition • weird stuff • wife and kid • windows xp
Filed under: Clean Up Computer
Just delete all the partitions then tell windows xp, when you boot from the disk, to format and install windows xp on the hard drive. That should wipe everything off.
Hi Sway:
You can boot into the laptop with a boot disk (Flash drive) and then type in format c:\ this will totally wipe out the partitons and all data on the C drive. You would then boot back in and type fdisk to create a primary dos partition and then re-install windows
OR
You can also boot from the XP install disk and then when you get to the part that asks you where to install it, delete the partitons. This will also wipe out all the data that is on there
Or you can download this: http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html
to scan the laptop and clean it up. It takes awhile but in the long run it could save you alot of work.
Good Luck