Re: Help reformating hard drive

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

From: Matthew (turn.deletethis_at_alltel.net)
Date: 01/02/05 

Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2005 02:26:21 -0500

That worked perfectly.

Thanks!

Matthew

"Nepatsfan" <nepatsfan@SBXXXVIII.com> wrote in message
news:N-SdnQ3S1pUBV0jcRVn-hA@comcast.com...
> If by "Reinstallation CD" you mean it's an OEM Windows XP installation CD
> and not some kind of "Recovery" CD then you might want to try this. The
> following assumes you want to wipe out all the files.
>
> Boot from the CD and instead of entering the recovery console, start the
> XP installation. You should be given the option of deleting, creating and
> formatting partitions there.
>
> Nepatsfan
> "Matthew" <turn.deletethis@alltel.net> wrote in message
> news:O$CXWp37EHA.2012@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
>> Short story: I have an XP Home install with a corrupt registry. It has
>> many problems, including rebooting randomly. I would like to format the
>> hard drive and start over.
>>
>> Because of issues, I need to format it (to NTFS) without knowing the
>> Administrator password. If this can be done, that answers my question.
>> If not, read on.
>>
>> I tried to boot from the "Reinstallation CD" Dell provided, and went to
>> the recovery console. It asked for the Administrator password. Believe
>> it or not, I know what it is.
>> The problem is, I entered the password and it says it's the wrong one. I
>> booted back up, and didn't see Administrator in User Accounts. I booted
>> in Safe Mode, and it still wasn't there. Very strange.
>> Anyway, I went to Start, Run, "control userpasswords2" (without the
>> quotes) and reset the Administor password. (I am able to do that because
>> I have a second admin account.) It still wouldn't let me in to the
>> recovery console.
>>
>> I booted in Safe Mode with Command Prompt, and I saw the welcome screen
>> with my main user and the (hidden) Administrator user. I clicked
>> Administrator, entered my password and it let me in to the command
>> prompt.
>> I couldn't format from there because the C: drive was in use.
>>
>> Any ideas?
>>
>> Matthew
>>
>
>

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