How to format a laptop

[Sword]

So, my girlfriend had this laptop, which had been exposed to a bit too many adwares, viruses, Star Force etc. Now she's gotten a new laptop and we're trying to see if we can't just wipe the old one clean and start over with it.

Turns out that formating a hard drive has become a lot more difficult than it was in my younger days. (Back then, any person, who didn't know what they were doing, seemed to end up formating C: by accident :D )

So, what i'm wondering is if anyone has a set-by-step guide to how I format this laptop?

[Gollum_ARG]

What I do to format, is put my bootable windows xp cd, restart the computer and run with the setup that automatically starts and just follow the instructions.

Otherwise... I don't know. Google search? :|

[thebluecanary]

Yeah with a laptop you need a boot disk that will let you format. The windows CD is the best way. Its just like most new PCs. you need to do it all outside of windows, because funny how windows gets mad if you try and make it format itself.

[Sword]

Damn I miss DOS sometimes.

Hope this thing can still read CDs....

[Sword]

Heh, it couldn't read CDs anymore. Curiously, it still reads DVDs :D

In the trash it goes.

[Apollinaris]

Formatting form the command prompt in XP should still work, being a laptop or desktop is meaningless. You should be able to just format a drive by right clicking it and selecting format, though if the system drive is the one you're trying to format I don't think it'll let you as windows itself is running on it. (I'm guessing this is your main problem.)

If it won't read CD's you could try may copying the "startup disk" for it onto a DVD, I'm unsure if that would work properly. If you have partition magic you could turn some empty HD space into a new partion and copy the win XP setup files there.

The main thing you need to do is boot from a drive other than what you want to format and b, reinstall WinXP. The WinXP disk is just convenient for this since it'll boot and let you format and partition drives prior to reinstallation.

BTW, formatting and managing drives is a bit easier than in XP than ye old fdisk and format. Disk Manager and the adminsitrative tools do this very well. You have to enable the Administrative Tools by editing the start menu's options. Right click on the task bar, goto properties, start menu, customize, advanced. Then go down the list of start menu items until you see "System Administartive Tools" and click the radio button next to where you'd like the Administrative Tools section to appear.

To get to Disk Manager, open the Administrative Tools group, click Computer Management. This opens one of those lovely MMC consoles like Defrag and other things use. On the window at the left click disk management, and it will list all your drives. Here you can create partions, change drive letters, etc.