Help Formatting Cpu

[King_Nothing]

Hello there, I hope this is an easy one to solve, Im sure that it is. But I need to format my old CPU, and for the life of me, I cannot find my XP Home cd that I actually purchased. So I got a deal on XP Pro with SP2 with my new cpu. Is it possible to format my cpu that has XP Home on it, with my XP Pro cd? I heard that it is do-able, but I thought I would look for 2nd opinions. Thank you everyone!

[sjmike]

yeah, its definitely do-able. Just pop your XP cd in the drive and follow the setup instructions, then it will ask you if you want to format the drive or leave it as is. There is also 3rd part utils that can do it, such as MaxBlast from Maxtor.

In case you don't know how, read this article:
http://www.ehow.com/how_6026_format-hard-drive.html

[King_Nothing]

Thank you very much Mike!

[King_Nothing]

Is there a way this can be done without having to install WINXP again with it? I need this drive out of the cpu w.o windows being installed on it. It was a primary windows drive in that cpu, but I want to now use it as a secondary, so I dont need windows to be re-installed. Thanks!

[sjmike]

yes, hook it up on your current computer as a secondary drive (slave drive) and then Windows should recognize it. Right click on the drive and click format

[King_Nothing]

Thanks!
It seems to have also worked by booting with XP and just deleting all the partitions, then I hooked it up as a slave and formatted it via disk management. Thanks for the guidance Mike!

[Robertbeer]

I use partition magic, then i create the partitions i want, Format, after that i just insert winXP CD and install the system or the system you want to (older windows versions).

Robert

[King_Nothing]

All seems well,thanks for all the tips!