I need to reformat a hard drive for a friend.

It can in a Liberta computer installed with Linux, and since then has been filled with rubbish.

He wants to install XP, and doesnt want anything else on the drive, so how do i go about reformatting the drive?

Cheers in advance!

If the machine has had Linux installed on it previously, you will need to remove the Linux partition using FDISK or similar, and re-create a new partition before formatting.

As you intend to use Windows XP, I would recommend creating an NTFS partition for Windows, rather than the old FAT32 system. Once you have created the partition, you can proceed to format the drive using the dos-based FORMAT command.

Hope this helps.

If you are installing Windows XP you don't need to do anything before installing as you can remove everything from the drive during the install process.

Boot from the Windows XP disk, when you reach the partitioning screen remove any partitions listed, then create a partition for the OS, format and install. It is quite straightforward and you are prompted all the way.

The installation from the Windows XP disk may fail, due to the presence of the Linux bootstrap.

A boot from a Windows floppy and then running FDISK /mbr will clear this.

Quite right and these are Microsoft's detailed instructions:

How to Remove Linux and Install Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314458

Yes, as I mentioned earlier, you need to remove the partition using FDISK. This is a simple process and only takes a few seconds.

Strange little programme.

It does the job, but does not tell you......................