How To Reformat/uninstall/anything..

[ttophone]

Hi I downloaded "FebCTP_5308_32bit_Main_Staged_DVD" from some download.microsoft.com place and I installed it. My computer has 700mb ram and a Raedon 9550SE graphic card.. so it cant really support it. It lags like hell and I cant even play any games... so uhh I was wondering if there is anyway to reformat or reinstall windows xp back. I did about 3 hours of googling and tried everything. I noticed that there is a way to reformat.. but I could not figure out how to reformat. Here is a couple of methods I tried to reformat..

I restarted with my windows xp recovery cd, it didnt find it. (it didnt even say press any key to boot from disc, just loaded vista) I even tried F12 and chose the CD rom boot.. and that didnt even work.

I tried to use disk management but I only had like 8mb accolcated or something and I did make a new volume of it.. and its F: but it doesnt have any files and I dont know how to boot from that.

I tried to boot from some floopy thing, but I didnt really know how to set one up and it didnt really work.

I tried to boot from safe mode with command prompt and type format c: but of course those files were in use so it didnt let me..

Also some info, here is my boot thing...

turn on comp

dell logo

2 options show

-Legacy (pre-longhorn..)

-I choose this, then two more options (its before when I had win xp, it worked)

-Windows XP Pro (what I always chose, when XP worked fine)

-Windows (never worked)

-Microsoft windows

-after this, it just loads up vista..

Whenever I choose the pre legacy thing, none of the options even work.. just a black screen =(

I dont even care about all the files on my comp.. I just want to get a clean xp do it all over.. please if there is any other method of reformating.. please tell me! Thank you.

[LLXX]

Is your BIOS setup configured to boot from the CD-ROM first? Otherwise it won't even try.

[fizban2]

You are going to need a XP cd (not the restore disk but an actual install CD) you original CD-key, you will either set BIOS to boot off the CD ROM first or you will need to hit F12 to choose a boot option menu, boot form the CD first and follow the prompts...

[dezt2]

haha! ok i'm sorry. but i found that amusing. really people dont install a new operating system if you dont know what your doing. its not like installing a game. it looks like you installed over xp. you should have made a partition and installed it on a separate drive.

ok press DELETE when your comp boots. in the bios make sure CDROM is set for all of the boot sequence. then reboot with the xp cdrom. good luck

[Daemonforce]

I would find WinPE to be rather useful here for some reason. =/

To format your setup you need:

A Windows XP installation media (the CD! o_O)

Some experience with any of the commands: fdisk, format, diskpart

Your BIOS password if it is password protected

Knowledge on how to select what devices your computer boots from and the order

First...You want to reboot the computer so that it POSTs and you need to enter your BIOS menu. You need to find the setting that chooses the boot order. It is important that you set it to boot CD/optical and maybe removable devices before any hard disks or you won't get much difference from what you have now.

From here it's up to you.

You can get a boot floppy with DOS and run fdisk/format or maybe get the Partition Magic disks and format the drive or you could just boot the Windows XP CD and go through the setup process. If you have a real bad situation here you could boot a WinPE disc and move stuff around before formatting.

Keep in mind that your current knowledge has put you in a really stupid situation if you don't understand the information that I'm feeding you. Maybe you'll think twice about installing a beta OS in your production environment.

Edited April 4, 2006 by Daemonforce

[fizban2]

deamon,

WinPE and an unattended XP wim would be my choice too but it sounds like ttophone doesn't have those things.

since he doesn't care about the info on the machine, booting from the CD and just deleting the format within the XP installer and reformating there will be his quickest path