can anyone please help me with formatting my hard drive

Foxy

i think what he is meaning on the set up screens he hasnt got smart (i think it is called enable) which means then you dont get the option you just go straight on to windows with no option of format. if no one knows i could try going into my start up screen and do it as that way it formats easy if that makes any sense to anyone who knows more about pcs than me

Gushie_2

If your still haveing problems try this, get a huge magnet and hold it over the HDD that should do the trick :-D

ok now the serious answer.

If you have Windows XP on your computer at the moment boot it up put a floppy disk in the drive then go to my computer, RIGHT click on A:\ choose format then make sure you have 'Create an MS-DOS disk' then click ok.

Once the disk has finished being made, reboot the computer LEAVING the floppy in the drive you will be boot to a dos environment.

as nelllock said just type format c:

then take the floppy out and put the cd in reboot the computer.

N.B. this relies on the assumption that your computer is set to boot from th CDROM if not you will need a set of boot floppies (which you can get from https://www.bootdisk.com)

hope this helps

Foxy

i dont do that the easiest way (or the non techie guide as a techie i aint) which i have on my computer myself is

on boot up press delete to enter set up menu
second option down is advanced bios fetures press enter then if they arent alread make the following changes
first boot up device cd rom
second boot device hdd
and at the bottom S.M.A.R.T. capabilities change to enabled press escape then f10 and confirm want to save and exit then when ever you want to format if you put cd in drive it will go to the boot up disk first on start up.
from there you can format no probs
hth
i had as devils own job trying to suss it about a yr back thats how i sussed it as im on xp

Foxy

wow i need a sit down down i knew the answer to a techie thread:eek: :j

Toxteth_OGrady

@foxy

Sorry to quash your new found sense of achievement on Techie. Put you're feet up and relax further whilst you're sat down because you didn't quite hit the nail on the head. Enabling/disabling SMART is coincidental and nothing to do with changing the boot sequence to Floppy or CD-ROM.

SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a diagnostic method originally developed by IBM Corporation for their mainframe drives to give advanced warning of drive failures. Large mainframe data centers wanted to know in advance if a disk drive was going to fail, because this gave them the opportunity to take steps to protect their data. Today all major disk drive manufacturers support SMART, including IBM, Western Digital, Quantum, Seagate, and Fujitsu.

How can SMART help a PC end-user? Not all disk drive failures are predictable, but many mechanical failures are predictable and this is where SMART can be of help. SMART measures many attributes of your disk drive over time and decides if they are moving out of tolerance. Knowing that your disk drive is going to fail and doing something about it, is infinitely better than having one crash in the middle of your work. Backing up your disk drive and possibly replacing it are far better options than trying to recover data from a failed drive.

Keep in mind that most disk drives, even if they are SMART enabled, do not have SMART turned on by default. When you enable it in the Bios on a PC, it will turn on SMART and begin tracking your drive health. SMART is only useful when monitored over a period of time.

Shown below are sample SMART attributes. Each drive manufacturer uses its own set of attributes to measure drive health.
Head flying height data
Throughput performance
Spin-up time
Re-allocated sector count
Seek error rate
Seek time performance
Spin try recount
Drive calibration retry count

:cool:

TOG

Foxy

oh well so that wasnt part of it i told you i sussed it out on my own but the other bit was right then i guess and would have worked on its own i guess, yes

Toxteth_OGrady

Yep :beer:

:cool:

TOG

Foxy

way hey still not bad for a non techie who worked it out themselves imho
:j :j :j :beer:

hopefully will makes sense to him the Foxy (ie non techie way) way of explaining.

im still well chuffed i was right for a change

sad or what:o :rotfl:

busterkeye

not even going to try and read all that stuff

let me tell you all what I'm wanting


I've had some viruses and now I'm clean! but the comp is running so slow (dont please try and tell me how to speed it up) I've saved all my pics and vids so there isnt anything to bother about now, so all I want is to wipe the comp completely clean as if I've just bought it. Can anyone help me do it? I've the Start up disk to get me going again and thats about it. Can anyone speak English to me?

Toxteth_OGrady

@busterkye

not even going to try and read all that stuff

Not very helpful - if you can't be bothered to read it, then how on earth do you expect people to help you out.

You've now been told five times in plain English how to format your c: drive using a DOS boot diskette.

Doing a format will completely wipe your drive clean, which is exactly what you're after. You can't wipe your drive clean with Windows running because the drive contains the Windows operating system (OS) and it protects itself from being wiped. Therefore to wipe your Windows OS (plus everything else) you have to boot your computer with a different OS on a different drive, so that you can instruct it to wipe your drive from there.

The easiest way to do this is to boot your computer to run the DOS operating system on a floppy disk. You can then use a DOS command to wipe your hard disk and the program will execute from the floppy and achieve what you want.

But to do this you first have to get hold of or make yourself a floppy DOS boot diskette.

When you first turn on your computer it searches for a valid OS on a drive to boot and load. It will load the first OS it finds on the first drive it searches.

So if your computer is set to find your hard drive first it will load Windows. But to get into DOS you don't want it to do this, you want it to boot from the floppy A: drive.

Likewise if you are using Windows Installations CDs for a fresh install you need it to boot from your CD-ROM drive first.

You therefore have to be able to change the sequence that your computer uses to search for bootable drives with an OS to load.

This is called the "Boot Menu" and you change the boot order by accessing the boot menu in your BIOS.

The boot menu contains the order in which it will search,

e.g. 1. Hard Disk (your C: drive)
2. CD-ROM
3. Floppy (your A:)

Sometimes the default setting can be:

1. Floppy
2. CD-ROM
3. Hard disk

If your BIOS already has this set, then providing you have a bootable floppy in your A: drive it will load DOS.

If it has hard disk set as the first bootable device, it will always load to Windows, so you'd have to go into the BIOS to change the first boot device to Floppy.

Can anyone speak English to me?

Here goes - final attempt.

STEP 1 - Put a blank floppy disk in your A: drive.

STEP 2 - Open 'My Computer' either by clicking on the 'My Computer' icon on your Desktop (monitor screen)or by going to Start -> My Computer.

STEP 3 - Look for the A: drive icon in the My Computer folder. Right click on it to bring up the context menu. Look about halfway down this menu for 'Format.......' and left-click on this. It will open this window

STEP 4 - At the bottom of the window tick the box that says 'Create an MS-DOS startup disk' and then click 'Start'

STEP 5 - When the creation of the flopy startup disk has finished, leave the floppy in the drive and shutdown your PC.

STEP 6 - Turn on your PC. If the floppy is the first device in the boot menu your computer will load into DOS and you will end up with a screen that looks like this

STEP 7 - If you get this screen, look at the arrow on the picture where it says A:\>_ All you have to do is type in format c: and press Enter on your keyboard. It will ask you to confirm by hitting enter again. Go ahead.

You have now completely wiped your hard disk

If you don't end up booting from the floppy and loading the DOS screen at STEP 6 above, and your PC just loads to Windows, it means you'll have to access the Boot Menu in the BIOS and change the Boot Sequence.

If that's the case, come back and ask. Hopefully you'll get an answer if you haven't put everyone off from helping you by then!!

:cool:

TOG