How do you clean a drive and reinstall XP when computer is stuck halfway through an XP install?
I have a computer which I wiped the drive on and tried to do a clean install of XP Pro. Unfortunately, I picked up the wrong disk and started to install XP from a volume license disc. Too late I discovered that there were no more licenses available under the volume license. I then tried to finish the install using a an XP reinstall disc which had its own unique and unused license key, but this did not work. Right now, I just need some step by step instruction on how to wipe the drive again and begin a clean install with the single license disc. Currently the computer seems to be stuck in that it only use the volume disc and it is not giving me any way to restart the install under the single disc. This computer has been down now for 3 weeks and the use is axious to have it back so the sooner I can get it up and running again better. Thank you so much for your help!
Start again with the correct disk right from the beginning and select use the partition tool within setup to completely delete any existing partitions on the disk
try zeroing out the drive first and then reinstall using the correct disk. I think gparted will do this
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KCTS is correct.
but if you like to delete everything before restarting, you can use partitioning tools to erase the partitions, or DBAN to clear the whole disk
all these can be found on UBCD : http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
If the installation is hanging at the "installing drivers" stage or the Repair option is unavailable then you'll need to either reformat or delete the existing partitions as above.
A repair/reinstallation from VLK to Retail typically takes around 15 minutes.
You could use the tools on the setup disk but you will save time by pulling the hardrive and mounting it on anotheer computer. You could then reformat the drive and start fresh.
It would be even quicker if you have a Bart Ultimate Startup Disk already made. You can then boot from your CD and then reformat the hardrive from the virtual windows environment.