Formatting hard drive

[hawkeye60]

Just acquired an used PC and need to format the hard drive. The drive has Win XP loaded but has not been activated and usage ends in 20 days. I do not have access to the XP disk.
I need to format the drive but only has a Win98 boot disk. Having got into DOS I tried format c: but the command is not recognised.

Can anyone suggest the easiest way to format this drive please?

 

[Waffle]

Is it possible to activate Windows?

Otherwise you will need a boot disk for W98 - www.bootdisk.com

This must contain fdisk and format.

 

[ProcalX]

make sure your bootable windows 98 floppy disk is in your floppy drive, reboot your computer, when your computer boots off the floppy and you are left with an A:\ prompt:

A:\

now put your Windows 98 CD into one of your CD / DVD drives, now type this:

D:\

now hit enter, you should now be in:

D:\

now type this:

cd Win98

now hit your enter button, you should now be in:

D:\Win98

now type this:

format C:\ /s

the "/s" part tells the format utility that this is the drive that will have the Operating System on, (although you do not HAVE to put this)

or just do:

format C:\

Now you should be able to format..

Now once it's finished, reboot your computer, and make sure your floppy disk is not in the floppy drive, but keep the Windows 98 cd in the drive.

then go through the setup process.