reformat a hard drive

[stephenjvb]

How do I force a reformat of a hard drive from an xp cd rom? I have a laptop and at least one system driver file has a bad checksum. I would like to reformat the drive and reinstall xp from the cd rom. I have the origional xp cd.

If I leave the hard drive driver installed the system reads files from the hd and crashes. If I remove the hard drive driver then xp won't boot from the cd because it doesn't find a hard drive. If I reformat the drive I should be able to skip any bad sectors. Since I can't start xp I can't check the drive.

How can I reformat my hard drive so I can reinstall xp. I don't have another computer with a serial ata drive interface so I can't reformat it in another computer. Can I be the only person with a corrupt system file on my laptop?

I hate to throw away a perfectly good (for some things) laptop because of a bad file.

 

[Hawkeye22]

You are given this option during the XP install. See step 1-f, and 1-g.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348

If this doesn't work, download a copy of Hirem's boot CD or "The ultimate Boot CD". These both have disk partitioning/formating software on them.

 

[c3h8]

To map the sectors, I believe, you will need to do a proper (as opposed to “Quick”) format. Using a bootable utility is perhaps the simplest way to reformat a hard drive. As a tool-kit, it is almost impossible to not recommend Hiren’s BootCD, though for simply managing disk GParted will also work.
Hiren’s: http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
GParted: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
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If you insist on using your Windows XP installation CD, you need to pull-up the recovery console. About.com has the following (well written) tutorial on how to format a drive from there. http://pcsupport.about.com/od/tipstricks/ht/format-c-from-recovery-console.htm