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I'm trying to reinstall my Windows XP on my old laptop. It got all virusy and stuff so I'm trying to format it and whatnot but I don't have the format recovery CD (rather never got it when I bought it).
So 1. I found this other XP CD that I used on my desktop. But when I put it into my laptop and tried to run it, it said that the CD is an older version of XP so it wouldn't let me continue.
2. I somehow find a method to format without the XP CD? I don't know if it's even possible but I'm willing to go through the whole possible crapload of procedures that I may have to go through
I may need some help here.
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You don't pop the XP cd in your drive while the computer is on and try and reformat. You put the CD in, restart the computer, go into BIOS and switch your CD drive to the top of the boot list, then save and exit. Your comp will then boot into the cd and you can delete the partition with windows on it and then remake/reinstall XP.
Edit: Alternatively, you can reformat your hard drive if you have another hard drive in your computer that you can boot off of. You just open up my computer and right click - format.
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Ok well I got that going but the fucking blue screen always seems to come up -.-a
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What blue screen comes up and what are you doing?
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I did what you said Boot from CD when I restart - and so the CD starts loading up all the essentials and after like 3 minutes into loading off from the CD (not at the install part yet) a blue screen comes up
"A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
If this is the first time you've seen this stop serror screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps: Check to be sure you have adequete disk space. if a driver is identified in the Stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. Try changing the video adapters. Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, Restart your computer. Press F8 to select advanced startup options, and then select safe mode.
Technical Information:
*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0xC0000005, 0xF76130BF, 0xF7a5F208, 0xF7a5EF08) *** pci.sys - Address F76130BF base at F760C000, Datestamp 3b7d855C
I have no idea what all this means. lol
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allot of laptops have a recovery part on there harddisk instead of a disk cause most people lose that shit '-.- you can activate it by pressing some key combination on your keyboard when its boating.
not all laptops tho depends of the company you bought your laptop from.
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On December 20 2008 04:06 XDawn wrote: I did what you said Boot from CD when I restart - and so the CD starts loading up all the essentials and after like 3 minutes into loading off from the CD (not at the install part yet) a blue screen comes up
The screen is blue while it loads the files necessary, for a couple minutes. If you're talking about a BSOD then I don't know what's wrong.
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On December 20 2008 04:08 Durak wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2008 04:06 XDawn wrote: I did what you said Boot from CD when I restart - and so the CD starts loading up all the essentials and after like 3 minutes into loading off from the CD (not at the install part yet) a blue screen comes up The screen is blue while it loads the files necessary, for a couple minutes. If you're talking about a BSOD then I don't know what's wrong. True no way for it to bsod on cdboot unless it was hardware failure like memory leaks.
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If you want, try DBAN (Darik's boot and Nuke), here: http://www.dban.org/
This will remove everything from you hard drive and then you can proceed to reinstalling your OS and other applications.
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On December 20 2008 04:08 Ziph wrote: allot of laptops have a recovery part on there harddisk instead of a disk cause most people lose that shit '-.- you can activate it by pressing some key combination on your keyboard when its boating.
not all laptops tho depends of the company you bought your laptop from. the newer ones(uh, 2yrs ago and so on) have the recovery partitioned in the HDD. the older ones are a bitch, i have had trouble formatting with an old laptop like the issue you had minus the blue screen(OP), i havent tested but duraks solution actually can work.
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I see... could someone run me a small guide on how to use DBAN? I'm not sure which one to download and how to go about it I'm a total newb when it comes to specific in-depth software/working
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I'll try to write out a guide for you later, but your going to most likely need the DBAN iso, unless your going to boot from a floppy. Burn the iso to a a disc and follow the same instructions as you did earlier and manipulate the bios to make sure dban starts up first when you restart. The dialogs following will be self-explanatory. Afterwards, when you try to reformat you should be left with only unpartitioned space.
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This happened to me in the past, so I used setup disks (floppy's). Just find out what your XP cd's version is (home/professional, service pack), go to this page, and click on the appropriate download link.
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On December 20 2008 06:43 iheartgna wrote: I'll try to write out a guide for you later, but your going to most likely need the DBAN iso, unless your going to boot from a floppy. Burn the iso to a a disc and follow the same instructions as you did earlier and manipulate the bios to make sure dban starts up first when you restart. The dialogs following will be self-explanatory. Afterwards, when you try to reformat you should be left with only unpartitioned space.
Thanks that would be much appreciated. ASAP if you could possibly.
and Floppy is not an option since it's a laptop so;
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