How do I completely wipe and format a hard drive so as to rebuild it with Windows XP?

Start the computer and during the preboot, press the key that takes you to the BIOS settings. Now look for the boot sequence area, and have it boot from the CD/ROM drive. Put your original disk in the drive, restart the computer, and reinstall the OS.

A little more shoudld be done to ensure you get rid of all of the nasties. After booting from the windows xp cd, delete the hard disk partition. Reestablish the partition. Do a FULL (not quick) format. Follow the instructions to continue the load. Enjoy.

@pdworkin Thanks!
@UScitizen How do I delete the partition? Is that part of the process, i.e. does it say, “Do you want to delete the partition?”

I’m okay with doing whatever needs to be done to this computer, as my alternative is buying another. Even the cheap ones are more powerful than this dinosaur, but I thought since I was going to get rid of it anyway I might as well try to fix it.

Yeah, it will let you delete, create and format the partition. It’s a good idea.

@Rarebear Yes. Just read each screen and you will find it is one of the options to delete partition.

@pdworkin @UScitizen Thanks guys, I appreciate the help.

That’s why we’re here.

When you put in the XP disk. Choose Custom install, that should give you options as to where to store it on the hard drive. It will show all the partitions too. And its there that you can wipe everything from the partitions and rejoin them into one complete hard drive.

You can never entirely delete everything.

True, but he just wants a clean system install, not a forensically clean hard drive.

@john65pennington Well actually you can delete everything. But it means you have to overwrite everything in memory with something else of your choice…like zeros or null or something.

Over and over and over and over and over.

Thanks guys. It turns out that I can’t find the system install discs anyway (I thought I had them). And since the computer is 6 years old, I’ll probably just get another one at a post-christmas sale. Even the cheap ones will be about 5 times as fast as my current one.