Hi guys, need some advice before I mess things up again... I have two os xp home and pro on same partition, had enough viruses,trojan and worm but thanks to forum I have able to remove most of them. I am also getting error at start up 'secondary disk drive 0 not found' and also cd rom is not listed in 'My Computer' but I have got an external cd rw now attached to computer which works fine.

Now the thing is that I have had enough of these problems so I just want to FORMAT my c drive and install xp pro again. Please guide me about the things I should do before I format the drive.
1. Is it possible to create a partition before and install the os on it and then format the c drive or the previous partition. If yes then how should I create a partition large enough to install os
2. Will I be able to boot up or install the os using external cd rw.

Guys every little help counts... thanks

Three questions first:

The XP Home and Pro versions, are one or both full versions or Upgrade versions?

Do you have a floppy drive on the PC?

Can you boot off the external CD drive?

Hi scott, they are both full version,
Yes I have floppy drive,
No, I can not boot up from external drive

Great! All three answers were the "right" ones.

What I would do is make a Win98 boot floppy (try bootdisk.com). Make sure it has FDISK on it and the drivers for your CD drive. Test the floppy to make sure you can read your CD drive when you boot from it. Also make sure you know exactly what hardware you have and have all the drivers.

Then boot to the floppy and run FDISK. Remove the existing partitions and recreate as you wish (I would use at least 3, C for the OS, D for Data and E for Programs). Then run Setup from the CD and install the OS.

Hi, can I make another partition before I format, and load the os on it. Thanks

Running FDisk will allow you to create partitions. This is done before you format. If you wanted to ADD a partition you would need to use something like Partition Magic. But the best way to clear up the mess is to start from scratch.