war|forever said:
Ok so I want to wipe my main C drive clean, and reinstall Windows XP Professional on it. I've got a backup harddrive where I've copied most of my commonly used programs and files on it, but how can I wipe my main boot volume (c)? I don't have any Windows cds to put XP Professional back on it even if I did manage to format the C drive from the DOS prompt. Help a brutha out.
War I'm confused. You want to wipe out your C: drive, reinstall Win XP but then later you say you don't have an XP disk to put XP back on? If you reformat your hard drive, everything is gone....XP, files, everything. You
must have an XP disk to reinstall. If XP is in C:\Windows\ like it is for most of us, you
will have to reinstall using a CD after you format C:
It doesn't have to be your disk. I've done it many times with another similar XP disk using the CD key code on the sticker on the side of the box. By "similar" I mean if XP Pro SP1 was originally installed on your machine and that's what the sticker on the side says, you can use any XP Pro disk that came out with SP1 and that CD key will install and activate fine. But your XP Pro SP1 CD key will not work with XP Home, or even an XP Pro SP2 disk.
If you don't have a disk, start asking around War. Somebody around you has an XP disk of your type.