Reformat help.

[CeeN]

I have 2 questions on reformatting...


1) if I reformat will my cd rom drive go away? I need to re-install windows using a system cd...so I need to keep my drives...

2) How can I get to dos in windows xp..doesnt seem like they give you a chance..

[Roy Sinclair]

1) Reformatting won't remove your CD drive but it will remove all your files and all the programs you've installed so you'd better have a backup copy of the important things and locate the installation media for the programs you want to install again before you take that step.

2) Windows XP is not built on top of DOS like Windows 95/98/ME were. DOS doesn't understand NTFS partitions or anything like that anyway. What do you want to go to DOS for?

[Spookster]

Hitting F8 when your system is booting up will take you to the Boot Option screen where you can select the option "Go to command prompt" in WinXP.

As for your CD drive going away most systems these days can boot from the CD drive.

[cryonic]

Reformating will not remove any of your hard drives available, but just in case while you had reformatted your PC and you are installing something new on your a 'newly' formated drive and needed to do so using cd-rom (duh..) on a let's say a lousy PC, well to share a little experience, i was installing WIN 98 on my empty hard drive, i had to wait or half an hour or less for my motherboard to detect the cd-rom, somtimes you just have to wait. I used to thought that my cd-rom was dead...

XP don't let you go to DOS... you 'll understand why... somehow... like most of us do.