red930 Posted June 23, 2004 Posted June 23, 2004 My friend wants me to format his hard drive. He has a sony vaio from 3yrs ago and never defragged it till couple days ago. I know, I know. Also said he lost his sound, which is probably prompting him to do a clean install. But as I know, the vaio came preinstalled with xp and only has a restore disk. I never used a restore disk.....doesn't it only have drivers? I believe store bought computers have the xp serial # on back of case (correct me if im wrong), and was wondering if i could use my xp disk to reinstall using his serial #. Didn't look at his computer yet, but he says it has viruses. A clean install is a good idea, but he will loose all those programs that also came preinstalled. He says he has norton antivirus, but knowing how he is he probably never renewed. I never formatted a used drive before..... how do i get to fdisk or can my xp disk format his hard drive? Thanks Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
spectrascope Posted June 23, 2004 Posted June 23, 2004 pop in the restore disk boot up go in into the bios and makes sure is setup to detect and check drive for boot media in the following order floppy cd-rom hdd this should allow it to boot from allow try it under wiundows and see what happens if yo[u do halft to install from windows it ushally will give a clean install option simply it will run make a temp boot file reboot and allow you format hdd I hope this helpful to you Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Byron Posted June 23, 2004 Posted June 23, 2004 I dont know if this is possible in xp home, but just go to "My computer" right click it, and click format, then use your winxp disk and his serial number. takes about 30 mins to load winxp though hope that helps ya Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Folding_Buddha Posted June 23, 2004 Posted June 23, 2004 Use the recovery disk. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Audioman71 Posted June 24, 2004 Posted June 24, 2004 I allway use PQ Partition_Magic_8 to Format disc it very good ! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
k1e1v1i1n Posted June 24, 2004 Posted June 24, 2004 dont do all these crazy things just set it to boot from cd and off u go it will do all the rest Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silverfox Posted June 24, 2004 Posted June 24, 2004 The restore disc will have all the pre-installed programs on it (or it will be part of a multi-disc set). The serial should be on a nice XP sticker on the case somewhere with the groovy holographic MS logo. Restore discs are mostly modified XP discs so that stuff is installed automatically. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
k1e1v1i1n Posted June 24, 2004 Posted June 24, 2004 jut agree with me i am the man Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kobalt Posted June 24, 2004 Posted June 24, 2004 dont do all these crazy things just set it to boot from cd and off u go it will do all the rest It's true, if you boot from cd with th XP disk in it it will install and format, OR you can always set the drive to be formatted as slave on your system and format from there Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
cybergrunt69 Posted June 30, 2004 Posted June 30, 2004 The majority of the time, the rescue disk will reformat the drive, then reinstall the OS, drivers, and bundled applications. Yes, you will most likely need the XP serial number, and no, your XP disk or your SN won't work. Running that CD will make the data and disk layout exactly the same as it was the day it left the store. Do your friend a huge favor (and avoid 17 million phone calls), and BACK UP THAT DATA! Once that CD is 1 second into the disk configuration, all of the data on it is toast. Find some way to get that data to a CD/DVD, and external disk, a network disk, something. If you have a copy, try using Norton Ghost to do an image of the drive, saving it to a network share (like your machine) before running that disk. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BloodySunday Posted June 30, 2004 Posted June 30, 2004 Also most restore disk have all the drivers for the computer on them to so it will save you the headache of looking for them yourself. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dean25 Posted July 1, 2004 Posted July 1, 2004 just do it how the others said first boot dev cd rom pop cd in and away as for drivers i had to do the same as you for a m8 last week before you start just download all the latest mobo drives first chipset sound ect Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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