Author Topic: formatting C: drive (Read 345 times)

Ike 2K# · « **on:** February 27, 2004, 10:36:23 AM »

If i formatt my hard drive ( C: ), would all virus in that drive be deleted?

btw, i use WiN XP:)

flakbait · « **Reply #1 on:** February 27, 2004, 10:56:19 AM »

If you format C:\ drive you lose everything on that drive. Viruses, images, OS, drivers, games, text files, preferences, patches, fonts, programs....everything. Make a backup of what you want to save, be absolutely sure you got everything, and then format. Nothing is more maddening than realizing you forgot a set of shots you'd been working on half a second after beginning the format.

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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High

Kaz · « **Reply #2 on:** February 27, 2004, 12:32:05 PM »

Hope C: drive isn't your only partition. I have multiple partitions from C to G (same hard drive) I use 10GB for the C drive and don't save ANY programs on it so only my OS is on there.

Learned this the hard way...

Roscoroo · « **Reply #3 on:** February 27, 2004, 01:42:03 PM »

i split any drive 40 gig and over in two or 3 partitions .

10- 30 gig for the os and programs

the next partition for pic's, files,music , movies ect .

the last partition is a back up of the program exe's , game exe's ,ect

or i run two hard drives the 1st one is os ,exe's ,everything.
while the second is a storage for the exe's ,pics,files ,ect

Fdisk and format will erase everything on that part of the drive then you reinstall the os , drivers, vga drivers, direct X .
now its a simple run the exe's from the partitioned /or second drive back on to the freshly formated drive and your up and running . ( I have a backup HD that i just toss in for this its way faster then tossing cd's in )

When you catch a virus it ussually attaches itself to all the exe's that run or have been ran on the primary partition . I also digs its self into the regestry files/exe's
Note if you use the second partition to run your .exe's from the virus attaches to those also (note: only when they have been run after you get infected)... thats why I run ALL .exe's off the 1st partition or hard drive. ( I only store them on the second hd/ partition)

I tried Kaz's method with the programs/.exes befor and it was more of a hassle then it was worth . I still had to reinstall the programs on the 1st partition/drive and they didnt always work properly after a format .(The mrs Roo did this to her pc and didnt have full .exes on the second drive .. long story huge nightmare .... )

tapakeg · « **Reply #4 on:** February 29, 2004, 07:24:40 AM »

How do you format a hard drive running XP?

I tried Format C:\

and t didn't work,,because XP has no DOS?

i did search's on google and only got more confused.

something about 6 floppies....... I don't know it was a while ago and I have drank since then.

I know once you go to NTFS you can't go back to Fat32.

any help on this?

Tapakeg

Orig · « **Reply #5 on:** February 29, 2004, 08:59:56 AM »

Most versions of microsoft windows won't let you format c: while you're running windows because that's the drive that windows is installed on. If it let you do that, as soon as the format started your computer would crash (almost immediately) and everything on the c: drive including your entire windows installation would be completely gone.

If you REALLY want to completely wipe your hard drive, one easy way is to create a bootable floppy disk ("format a: /s" or use the format tool under drive properties and select the "copy system files" option) and then copy from c:\windows\command the utilities fdisk and format. Boot from the floppy disk and run the utility "fdisk". In fdisk, you will need to first remove any partitions listed, then create whatever partitions you want. I usually just create one partition of the maximum size. You should probably set the primary partion as the "active" partition, but some computers will automatically do this for you if no partition is set as active when the computer boots up. Then quit fdisk. The computer will probably say you should reboot, so reboot.

To immediately reinstall windows, remove the floppy and insert the windows installation CD, and reboot. The computer should boot from the cdrom drive and let you install windows. If it doesn't boot from the cdrom drive, you may need to enter your computer's BIOS setup menu (usually by hitting the delete key while the computer is starting up) and in the boot options menu, selecting the cdrom drive as a boot device. Then restart and it should boot up from the cdrom drive.

If you just want to have a blank but bootable hard drive, then immediately after running fdisk and rebooting, run the utility format ("format c: /s"), which will format the c: drive and make it bootable.

To reinstall windows at that point, remove the floppy and put the windows CD in the cdrom drive and reboot. It will hopefully boot using the cdrom drive.

If your computer won't boot froma windows CD in the cdrom drive, you're probably fuxored because accessing the cdrom drive from a dos command prompt requires 2 drivers to be loaded. One driver goes in your config.sys file and is supplied by the cdrom drive manufacturer. The other driver is "mscdex.exe". It goes in the autoexec.bat file and is supplied by microsoft. Explaining how to configure this to work would take a few pages of text, so if you have to do it and don't know how, you may be better off taking your computer to a repair shop and asking for help.