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September 24th, 2004 20:00
Dimension 8250 reformat question
Hello,
I was attempting to reinstall windows XP on my Dimension 8250. I followed the instructions given by Dell on booting from the CD drive, which worked fine. Followed other directions for formatting until I got to an NTFS and FAT32 paritition screen, one saying I had 39MB of space available (FAT32 partition) and the other like 33,600 something (the NFTS partition). Great.
However, as I was reading the instructions for booting from the CD drive, Dell says: "If you use a Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP operating sysetem and the hard drive is reformatted in NTFS, neither Dell Dimension ResourceCD nor the boot disk will be able to read the contents of the hard drive".
Can someone please advise what this means and if it's ok to delete those partitions? Is deleting those partitions part of my old hard drive settings or is that a recommended new setting? Please help. Thanks
Eric
I was attempting to reinstall windows XP on my Dimension 8250. I followed the instructions given by Dell on booting from the CD drive, which worked fine. Followed other directions for formatting until I got to an NTFS and FAT32 paritition screen, one saying I had 39MB of space available (FAT32 partition) and the other like 33,600 something (the NFTS partition). Great.
However, as I was reading the instructions for booting from the CD drive, Dell says: "If you use a Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP operating sysetem and the hard drive is reformatted in NTFS, neither Dell Dimension ResourceCD nor the boot disk will be able to read the contents of the hard drive".
Can someone please advise what this means and if it's ok to delete those partitions? Is deleting those partitions part of my old hard drive settings or is that a recommended new setting? Please help. Thanks
Eric
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shesagordie
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September 24th, 2004 22:00
enhoch.
The 39mb partition is the EISA FAT32 partition that exists on the drive, contains diagnostic software, that's installed at the factory when the system is built. The reason for this being setup on a FAT32 partition, is so that it can be accessed through a boot disk in case the NTFS partition is not bootable.
You do not have to have this diagnostic partition on a system for normal operation, but it may be helpful for some types of technical problems, if you have to call into Dell Technical Support.
As all the same diagnostic tools are on one of your Dell CDs, this partition can be removed without causing a
problem, but once removed, it can not be recreated.
For a clean reinstall of XP, you have to delete all partitions and then format the hard drive, if you wish to keep the Dell small diagnostic partition, then don't delete it.
The following instructions may help.
How to configure a Dimension series system to boot to the CD/DVD drive.
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp
Prior to installing, remember to disconnect all external peripherals from the computer, except the keyboard, monitor and mouse. While installing, delete all existing partitions (Paragraph 5) when you are prompted, then remake and format them (Paragraphs 6 & 7), followed by installing XP.
After the installation, you will need to download and install the MicroSoft Critical Updates, plus any other updates you think necessary, also remember to enable the firewall before going online.
Bev.