How do I delete every thing from my hard drive and start over?

There are two ways you could do this.

1).

a) Boot with the OS you decided to keep.

b) Go to your control panel and find the "system" icon and open it. Depending on which OS it is, go to the "Advanced - startup and recovery options". Open it by clicking on something like "settings" .

c) You will see an option called "edit startup options". Open that , and it would bring up a file in notepad (boot.ini). Remove the OS you don't need manually (just delete that line). Save it.

Now you boot, it won't ask you to pick one as you already removed the unwanted one.

But this only has removed the entry. The files are there. So all you need to do is go to the directory where that unwanted OS is installed (information and directory can be seen in boot.ini) and then delete that entire directory structure. You can easily do that, because that OS is not in use.

This is the better way.

2)

The second option applies only if you installed both the OS on two differnt drives. Then you can just make the above change (all steps upto c) and then use the disk administrator in "computer management " to format that drive.

Insert your windows XP installation CD, then reboot your computer.

If your computer is set to boot from CD before hard drive, the windows XP installation program will start up. Delete your current C: partition and create a new one, then format it and install windows. The installation program will walk you through doing all of this, just read the screens carefully and follow the instructions.

If the installation program does not start up, then it is likely because your computer is set to boot from the hard drive before the CD drive. When you first turn on your computer, you should notice a little message pop up sometime before the windows splash screen saying something like "Press DEL to enter setup", or something similar.

Press whatever key it asks you to press, you will now be in your BIOS. Look through the menus until you find something relating the Boot Priority, where it will let you set which devices it checks first as it boots up, you want to make sure your CD drive is listed before your hard drive. Save and exit the BIOS, and the windows installation program should now start up.

Get partition magic, delete that partition containing the unwanted operating system.

Redistribute free space.

http://shop.symantecstore.com/DRHM/servlet/Control...

I always wonder where many people here get there info... Its kind of disturbing.

Email me if you need help.

Format the drive

first make sure you back up any files you want to save. then plug in the recovery disk that cam with your system. the disk will run on its own and you just have to follow the prompts. good luck.

go to ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS and delete the old operating system program.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/clean_installation_of_...