Reformat hard drive & reinstalling WinXP

Question

I am reformatting my hard drive so I can reinstall WinXP after a damaging virus attack.  I successfully followed the refomat/reinstall procedure until I got to the step where you type in 'F' to format the selected partition.  The message 'Setup is formatting.....20%' has been on the screen for two hours.  I've reformatted before and never had this happen.   BTW, I'm sure I selected the correct partition as I had a Dell rep on chat at the time.   Dimension 8200 40GB hard drive Only monitor, keyboard and mouse are attached to the computer.   Any ideas?   Thanks.

tikes · Answer

I went to Paul Thurott's site and he describes exactly what I've been doing. Under his "Clean Installing Windows XP" instructions, I am currently on step 7. From Thurott's site, step 7:

"Hit F to continue, and a yellow progress bar will indicate the status of the format. When this is complete, Setup will again examine your disks, and create a list of files to copy."

This is where I am now EXCEPT the yellow progress bar is not progressing. It has been stuck at 20% for four hours now. Should I start over?

Denny Denham · Answer

tikes,

If you had a Dell rep on the phone I hope he was a new hire, because what he is having you do is totally unnecessary. Formatting is done as an integral part of reinstalling Windows XP. See this.

Unless you have repartitioned your hard drive since you received it, you have one active partition (C:\) on which XP is installed. You will also have a ~35MB partition containing Dell Diagnostics and (depending on the age of your computer) another 3-5GB partition containing a restore image.

Denny Denham · Answer

tikes,

Even if you had selected a full format (rather than the Quick Format recommended) I can't imagine it taking that long. On my 40GB drive a Quick Format with NTFS took far less than 30 minutes. I cannot recall seeing reports of an extreme delay during the formatting process. Start again and see if the results are any better.

tikes · Answer

Thanks.  I did restart and now I get the following message after I boot from the XP CD:  'File \i386
tkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded.  The error code is 7.  Setup can not continue.  Press any key to exit.' What does this message mean?

boppo · Answer

just start over, delete the partition, create a new one and format long way.

tikes · Answer

Easier said than done.  This has been the source of my problems.  MY CD Rom makes appalling noises when I try to boot from it.  It seems to be seeking and never finding the programs I need to rreformat/reinstall.   Once in a while I will get as far as 'Enter F to reformat' and it locks up.  The last time I tried, I got this message 'INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing, status 32768.'   Right now, after trying again, I got as far as the blue screen with 'Windows Setup' and now my CD Rom is spinning like a magneto but there is nothing on my screen.

boppo · Answer

you could go to bootdisk.com and download win98 boot disk and do a fdisk on the drive and delete the partitions. Also  I would try to the cd player, might have some dust in it.

tikes · Answer

When I do as you suggested, I get the a:\ prompt.  Then I enter 'c:' and I get 'Invalid drive specification'. When I try to format c: from the a:\ prompt I get 'Bad command or file name'.

Denny Denham · Answer

tikes,

The problem is that your C:\ partition is formatted with the NTFS file system, which DOS cannot "see." When you try to change partitions by entering C: at the DOS prompt there is no C: partition. When you try to format C: since it doesn't exist, the format command is rejected as a bad command since it cannot be executed.

The suggestion was to run FDISK which will get rid of the existing NTFS partitions (instructions here) but it sounds like you have a problem with your CD-ROM drive. It would be prudent to run the Dell 32-bit diagnostics to determine if that device is operating properly.

tikes · Answer

Denny - I did run the Dell 32 Bit diagnostics and my CD-ROM passed all tests, but it still makes a godawful noise.  When I run fdisk from a Win98 boot disk and follow the instructions in your link, I get messages saying there is no Logical, Extended or Primary DOS partitions to delete.

boppo · Answer

you need to delete the non dos partitions. there is a option for that. Message Edited by boppo on 05-23-2005 11:39 AM

tikes · Answer

I deleted both non-DOS partitions on my hard drive.  I tried to reinstall WinXP:  no luck.  I tried running Dell 32 Bit Diagnostics on my C: hard drive.  It failed with this message: 'Confidence Test:  FAIL (Block 25452:  Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected.)'

cvcgirltech · Answer

The last message you sent incorrectable data is a hard drive failure message... you need a new drive.. are you still underwarranty?

tikes · Answer

No, unfortunately my warranty expired in Jan '05.  I did purchase a new hard drive and it should be delivered tomorrow.  Thank you for your reply.

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Reformat hard drive & reinstalling WinXP

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