reformatting hd and reinstalling win

[kiko]

i know its an ancient question but still i dont know the perfect answer. heres what happened.
i deleted some spyware in my computer and after restarting it i got this
message "missing operating system."
now what i want is to reformat my hard drive and reinstall again the operating system(win xp pro)
i tried to reinstall th os using dos but it says the setup cant run on dos, its wiered bec the win xp cd is in drive d: but in dos its in drive a:
please give me step-by-step and clearly explained instructions that a newbie like me can easily understand.
thanks.

[hawk7771us]

http://www.blackviper.com/Articles/OS/InstallXPPro/installxppro1.htm
step by step also a good place for services

[Paul Komski]

You cant run setup (setup.exe) from a dos boot floppy but you can run the installation if you run winnt (windows\winnt.exe) from dos on a floppy or from another hdd or from a network.

[ziba-june]

Just go into your CMOS and setup startup sequence to first CD-ROM and then to IDE0, save and exit. Put your WinXP cd in your CD-ROM and turn on your PC and follow instructions.

[Paul Komski]

its wiered bec the win xp cd is in drive d: but in dos its in drive a:

Is the CD assigned the drive letter A when you boot from a floppy (weird) or when you boot from a CD (weird unless its a Win98/ME installation CD) in which case the CD gets divided into two parts becoming a virtual floppy (A) and a virtual HDD (D).

[kiko]

i tried to format my hd but i got theis message
"Invalid media type reading c:
Abort, Retry, Fail."
is my hd damaged?

[david eaton]

Were you booting from a floppy disk when you got that message?
If so, it's probably because the existing drive C is formatted in NTFS, which is not recognised by DOS (FAT).

From the same boot disk, run fdisk, select option 4, view partition, and see if what shows.

However,if you boot from the CD,it will be possible to reformat, and reinstall.

It is NOT possible to start installing WinXP from a floppy disk.

[Paul Komski]

It is NOT possible to start installing WinXP from a floppy disk
There was a time when I believed this but it needs qualification. You can initiate an installation of Win2K/XP using setup.exe or winnt.exe. Setup.exe wont run from a DOS boot floppy but winnt.exe will as long as the floppy can see the installation files on the CD (which isnt usually necessary since the CD should be bootable but if for some reason it wont boot you can use an ordinary boot diskette with CDROM support) or if the i386 folder has previously been copied to a fat partition on the HDD then winnt can be run from there as well. I'm pretty sure you can also use winnt to install from files on a network.

If using winnt from a floppy it does speed things up if you first run smartdrv.

Using setup allows more options with respect to inplace upgrades/repairs and so on than winnt, which basically does a clean install. You can also use winnt with a number of switches (http://labmice.techtarget.com/articles/winntcmd.htm); same for 2K and XP I think.

[ziba-june]

I tried to format my hd but i got theis message
"Invalid media type reading c:
Abort, Retry, Fail."
is my hd damaged?
Probably you are booting from a:\ and running the format command from C:\. The format command need to be on the floppy and you run it from a:\ too.

[ErnieK]

I ma maybe picking this up wrong, but you can get WinXP boot floppy from Boot disk. com ( http://www.bootdisk.com/ ) This disk can be used to make a fresh install of XP. I have never used it myself.

[Paul Komski]

you can get WinXP boot floppy
Well there are at least six of them - not just the one floppy. Its a messy way to go if you have the installation CD. If one can boot to the CD it is by far the easiest method in most cases.