help please

ok so im running windows xp home edition on my pc..and i want to format and install prof edition...but i have no idea on how to format..i only have the windows Xp professional cd and thats it..can anyone help please

Have you backed up and saved everything you want to keep on the drive? Formatting will erase everything that resides on your hard drive now.

There are several ways you can proceed. You can set your BIOS settings to try booting from the optical drive first, pop in your XP Pro CD and run a fresh install, formatting the drive prior to installing the OS (you don't want to select "upgrade" if you want to format).

You can boot to the CD, tell it to go to console and use the command FORMAT C:\ , C:\ being the drive partition you want to format.

If you have a floppy drive, you could format the floppy from within Windows, telling it to make the floppy bootable by using the /s switch like so: FORMAT A:\ /S

Then you would want to copy the file FORMAT.COM from your Windows/System32 folder (or XP\System32 or what have you) to the floppy, boot to the floppy and format the drive that way, then boot from the Win XP Pro CD and do a fresh install.

Is your XP Pro CD new, as in does it already have SP2 incorporated already? If not, then you might want to slipstream the disk, which would simplify the installation (and the subsequent patching), and there are wuite a few things you can do to make the installation run faster and more smoothly.

Dngrsone's Slipstreaming guide

If all you have is the Windows XP cd and you are formatting the entire hard drive, boot from the setup cd. Then, when you get to the screen that asks you what partition you want to install Windows on, you can simply delete the existing partition and create two new partitions of the size you want, and then you can select which partition you want to install XP Pro. After that, you could boot from the XP Home cd, and select the other partition to install that onto.

Boot the computer with the XP CD in the drive and allow setup to begin. When you come to the screen where you select the drive partition you should see the drive listed with all the space listed as unpartitioned. If the drive was in use previously, you'll need to delete all the existing partitions. To do this you'll have to hit the 'D' key followed by the 'L' key. The screen instructions will be visible to guide the process.

Once all the existing partitions are deleted the display will show the total unpartitioned disk space.

Hit the 'C' key to create a partition. If you only want one partition then hit enter and the entire disk space will be allocated to the C Drive, but it will be NTFS, assuming the drive is 32GB or larger. However, if you want to create several FAT32 partitions then do not hit the Enter key. Instead, hit 'Backspace' until the cursor moves to the first digit. Enter the size of the first partition to be created.

Repeat the create partition process as many times as you want till all available space is allocated to partitions.

Once all the partitions have been created, use the 'Up' arrow key to select the C drive partition to install XP on and select to format it with FAT32 if you are sure that NTFS isn't a viable file system in your situation.

After XP has been installed and is running, navigate to Disk Management and format the other partitions with either FAT32 or NTFS. This step is necessary before the partitions will be available for use.

my problem is that i have a Drive C (51gb) and Drive D (4b) and whenever i put format c it formats the D not the C...how do i erase that partition??

whaaat ... i never heard of such a thing !
anyways the method i outlined in my post and jmurrayhead outlined in his will completely elliminate all partitions... give it a try and let us know how it goes.. if it still doesnt work.. we try and get out the bigger guns

Boot from XP cd and enter setup. When it gets to where you can choose where to install XP, it will list all partitions on the hard drive. Highlight the D:/ drive by using the arrow keys. Then follow the instructions on the screen. I believe "L" is used to delete a partition. After that, you can create another partition, delete all partitions and create one single partition and install XP on that.

thats a new one on me too !!
I'd go with the suggestions of formatting the drive during the windows XP setup process. using format c: in dos is old hat now!! I can't remember when i used it!

Something i would say if you have a drive that size is to partition it into 2 partitions. then have all your programs on one and your work/important files etc on the other partition. this means if you get a virus or a BSOD you can wipe the programs partition without worrying about loosing your data !! well worth the little bit of extra time it takes to set it up in my opinion !!

RF

DOS???? What's DOS!?

who knows!! Denial of Service