Formatting problem.

michael172

Distinguished
Jun 20, 2008
4
0
18,510
Hi everyone. Hope this is in the right section.

So the computer will boot the existing windows fine, im on it now, but when i go to format it, you load up the windows screen after post, and you get to the blue screen and it says please wait, where you should have the list of options, it simply turns the computer off. This does it with both my origional and genuine XP cd and also a copy of a stripped out version.

Only things ive done today are change my computer fan back ot the origional as the Freezer was big, dusty and noisy, have re-greased the cpu, and also remove my secondary hard drive. no bios settings have been changed aside from the boot sequence.



...................



Ive done some digging, i have reset my bios now, and also replaced the hard drive so i was running as i was before.

Still no luck.

Im running fine right now, only problem ive got is this formatting problem. Ive not had it before.

Might try diconnecting my sata and seeing if i can install on my ide, removing the soundcard altho thats never been a problem.


Incase anyone is interested my specs are:

Amd athlon 64 3500+ (939)
Asus A8n 32 Sli Deluxe
2 x 1gb of corsair XMS Plat
Primary HDD - WDC 160gb SATA 2
Secondary HDD - Seagate 160gb IDE
XFX Geforce 7900GTX
Creative fatality x-fi sound card
520watt Corsair PSU

Nothing to do with heat, everything is running fine, ventilation is good, and ive not been having any problems before this.
 

number13

Distinguished
May 20, 2008
2,121
0
19,860
if your trying to format the primary HDD, the OS won't let you, you'll ned to boot from a disk(CD or 3.5") that has a format pgrm on it, if your trying to format a second HDD,I would still use a boot disk, if you want to destroy the data on the HDD use a boot disk and run fdisk then format it, I prefer to use a dos disk with fdisk and format in it,if your going to do a fresh install of XP, do a seach for "wipe" and use that to write 0's to the drive first, it'll help to get rid of any corruptions the the OS had
 

michael172

Distinguished
Jun 20, 2008
4
0
18,510
Ive tried booting from the origional windows Xp pro CD shouldnt that be enough? Although ill try and fine those youve mentioned.

Do you think i should get into my second OS on the slave and try formatting and wiping the master through windows that way? and is it possible to write zero's to a hard drive your not currently running (the master in this case) an OS on whilst your still running on the windows installed on the slave.

Basically im trying to do a format and reinstall of Windows Xp on my primary hard drive, ive done it a hundred times, and not had a problem, but for some reason it shuts down at the same point during setup. (blue windows setup screen)

I am currently running Xp on the master without any problems.
 

Shez

Distinguished
Jul 10, 2004
296
0
18,780
I assume that by WDC - you're referring to a Western Digital HD?

If that is the case, go to the WD website. They have ISOs you can use to make bootable CDs that'll allow you to format your HD. Seagate has the same sort of tools but it doesn't sound like you'd like to format that drive.
 



So you have an operational operating system on each HDD?

So how were you booting into each one?

Using WinXP or a separate booting utility?

If you were using WinXP you should have a shared boot record, unless you completely installed each OP/SYS independently without the other HDD connected, if thats the case and you're not using a separate boot utility, you've thrown WinXP a bone and its done what it could with it, so whats the deal?

As far as using one to format the other if the boot record is shared, I doubt XP will allow you to do that.