[SOLVED] Help formatting

Re: Help formatting

Greetings papaveracee, Welcome to TSF! :wave:

Perhaps this guide may be of assistance to you...

The Windows® XP Installation Check List.

1. The Windows® XP SP2-CD (naturally) :grin:

2. Darik's Boot N Nuke (Click the coloured Link).

3. Please read this guide.

4. The Motherboard CD that contains all the necessary Drivers etc.

A couple of tips...
a. Darik's Boot N Nuke will take about 4½ hours to completely wipe the Drive; however, this will vary depending on how big the Drive is. (That estimate is for a 80Gb HDD). Wiping the HDD this way will give you the best chance of a 'clean' uninterrupted installation.

b. When you get to Figure 7 in 'The Guide', you can create more than one partition here by simply telling Windows® how big you want it. Should you do decide to create an extra partition, it will not be active until you do so after the installation is over and done with...we can give you guidance as to how this is done, so partition away if you wish.

c. Once the installation is finished, with all the Motherboard Drivers installed, and Internet connected, I strongly recommend that you install a reputable Anti Virus program first; then, go to the Windows Update Site and download all the updates (including SP3).
AVG™ is has a very good free version available here.

d. DO NOT have any unnecessary items; such as, USB cameras, Printers etc., attached to the machine...install all these after the installation is finished, and fully updated from Microsoft®.

If you are uncertain about anything here, do not hesitate to ask for assistance.

Good Luck with this task; when you have finished, please report back with the success or failure of the installation.

Kind Regards,

Re: Help formatting

Thanks for the tip chauffeur2!

For some reason, I can't boot from the many boot cd's of DBAN I created... I did manage to boot from a USB flash drive, but the SYSLINUX program that runs then fails to load the appropriate kernel image.

I went through all the DBAN FAQ and troubleshooting I could, but didn't find an answer.

Any ideas?

Thanks again!

Re: Help formatting

Hey guys,

Ok, just so it's clear, this is not my first time formatting! I've done it countless times.

So yes, I prioritised my DVD drive in the boot menu sequence, in order to boot from CD.

The thing is, for some reason, when I use an XP inst CD, I get an error code before windows finishes loading up all its drivers etc: STOP oxoooooo7b, which basically means it couldn't detect my hard drive. This problem does not occur when I use a Vista inst CD.

Therefore, I believe I have 1 of 2 problems:
1- hardware problem with my hard drive; though I think this is unlikely cause I can format and install fine with Vista.
2- the embedded XP drivers are insufficient to run one of my devices; which is why I wanted to try to install 3rd party drivers (for my hard drive, mother board and controllers) upon XP load up. Unfortunately, I don't have a floppy drive and XP seems unable to load drivers from another source in the load up menu.

With regards to DBAN:
1- I am certain I have correctly burned the boot CD, which fails to boot.
2- When I succeed to boot from a USB flash drive, I enter the DBAN's Syslinux program but it fails to load the appropriate kernel images, and I don't know what command to type in the command prompt to get it going (I tried the autonuke command and all possible kernel file names, but I always get the same message: failed to load kernel image).

Finally, I've detected a ghost partition on my drive called EISA or something like that. Could that be interfering with the formatting or DBAN process?

Thanks.

On another note, I did manage to format and reinstall Vista so that it's running well. So if we don't figure this out no worries. At least I can use my computer! But I would like to come back to XP...