Re: new hard drive



al52 wrote:
i have fitted a new hard drive and when i tried to install XP it gave me no option to use FAT32,


How large is the hard drive/partition in question? By design, WinXP cannot create and format a new partition greater than 32 Gb. This is because NTFS is the superior file system, and not nearly as wasteful of drive space. (If you make a FAT32 partition larger than 8 Gb, you're "throwing away" significant amounts of storage capacity. However, the OS has no problems being installed upon or otherwise using FAT32 a partition larger than 32 GB, as long as that partition has been created/formatted by another OS, such as Win98.


so i cancelled and re-booted and all i get is a operating system error.What do i need to do to enable me to format the drive and install XP (home edition).It must be small enough to fit on a floppy disk and simple to use.By the way the new drive is set to master.



Simply boot from the WinXP installation CD. You'll be offered the opportunity to delete, create, and format partitions as part of the installation process. (You may need to re-arrange the order of boot devices in the PC's BIOS to boot from the CD.)

HOW TO Install Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;316941

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm


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