I Need More Help (Fomating an XP System)

[Encore]

Hello all,

My mothers friend has a XP PRO system and her kids messed it up bad and it doesn't even want to start up. It freezes or is trying to load to many applications, or actually spyware and adware that got sucked into her PC from her kids messing with it. They're trying to run their programs in the background and it locks up the PC.

I want to format it, but of course it didn't come with any sort of XP Pro Disc. It's a legit system from what I can tell.

How could I format this machine without any discs? Is it possibke?

Thanks.

 

[BrAinPaiNt]

Hello all,

My mothers friend has a XP PRO system and her kids messed it up bad and it doesn't even want to start up. It freezes or is trying to load to many applications, or actually spyware and adware that got sucked into her PC from her kids messing with it. They're trying to run their programs in the background and it locks up the PC.

I want to format it, but of course it didn't come with any sort of XP Pro Disc. It's a legit system from what I can tell.

How could I format this machine without any discs? Is it possibke?

Thanks.

Might give this a try...

System Restore

 

[Yeagermeister]

Try going in to safe mode....F8 when booting.....and see if can clean out some of that junk.

It's been my experience that the system restore doesn't work but it could have been just that pc.

 

[Encore]

System Restore doesn't work.

I've tried cleaning it out and that didn't work. It still locks up and It won't allow me to do anything.

So, is there no real way to format an XP machine?

 

[BrAinPaiNt]

System Restore doesn't work.

I've tried cleaning it out and that didn't work. It still locks up and It won't allow me to do anything.

So, is there no real way to format an XP machine?

Sure you can format it...are you going to load another OS on it afterwards.

Thought you did not have an XP disk so did not want to format it.

However if you have another OS (say windows 2000 or whatever) that you can load on it instead of XP.

Then the way to format it is to find out what brand of hard drive you have on the computer.

Then go to that hardrives (the companies) web page and download the disc utility from there.

Normally you run it and save it onto a floppy disk and then reboot the machine letting the floppy load.

Almost all disc utilities will have a program on it to reformat their harddrives.

But once again that will do you no good if you don't have another operating system disk to put on.

 

[Yeagermeister]

Here's a good hard drive format utility

http://www.killdisk.com/

 

[iceberg]

format is a basic system command and you really don't need a floppy or anything else, if your machine is 4-5 years old or newer. even many older machines will do THIS:

1) put cd in to drive
2) boot up and go into CMOS (bios) setup
3) look for boot sequence and move the CDROM to boot 1st
4) save and exit and boot off cd by hitting *any* key when prompted
5) when you're asked to put it in the directory it chooses, you'll say you want another one and you can back out, FDISK to clear the partition, and then reFDISK it to put it back. you'll need to enter the volume name and verify it - but go ahead. then do a "quick format" and follow the directions to reinstall XP.

no, you can't do it w/o a cd. look on the cd for a winxp directory or some directory with a LOT of cab files on it - you should be able to make your own bootable cd from a "flat" on the hard drive (flat being more or less the right directory from the cd copied to the hard drive)

this will work for any drive - you don't need the manufacturers software to setup the drive - what's in the OS works wonderfully.

system restore - works many times but if the spyware is *that* deep, PC enema time. safest way to clear it out.

 

[Yeagermeister]

PC enema time

LOL I like that