Quick Question About Reformatting An OS

[AntonioPetrole]

I have a quick question about reformatting my hard drive. Well its not mine, its the one at my work. I can usually fix these sorts of things easily but i am stumped on this one.

Basically, our computer took a shit and my manager reformatted it using the partition on the hard drive. We tried installing quick books pro 2010 on it and it had all these driver errors and NET framework errors. So then he told me to put in a copy of XP service pack 2 and reformat it with that. Well, I did and then found out there are no drivers for our computer for XP. Now im trying to reformat it back to windows 7 using the partition and I cant find any way to bring it up. F8 doesn't give me and option for repair either. Any ideas guys?

The comp is a Dell Inspiron 570 desktop

 

[sprack]

XP is most likely missing the Intel AHCI drivers. Easiest way is if you have the install disk that Dell sent with it. Otherwise get Nlite and make a slipstreamed version.

For Win7 you'll have to reinstall. The recovery partition is meant to fix fuxored OSes, not do full sale replacement of a formatted partition.

 

[AntonioPetrole]

XP is most likely missing the Intel AHCI drivers. Easiest way is if you have the install disk that Dell sent with it. Otherwise get Nlite and make a slipstreamed version.

For Win7 you'll have to reinstall. The recovery partition is meant to fix fuxored OSes, not do full sale replacement of a formatted partition.

so in other words i have cant reformat using the partition? BTW Sprack i feel like every computer question I have asked on here has been answered by you. Cheers!

 

[sprack]

You can use the partition, you just won't recover any info of it. Default windows install (if you wipe the drive) does a 200M recovery partition and the OS on the next one. Unless you can salvage something from the prior install I'd say just start fresh.

Ya I guess I do answer a lot of the computer threads. Its the one thing I can definitively say I know a lot about. Well that and motorcycles (racing).

 

[AntonioPetrole]

You can use the partition, you just won't recover any info of it. Default windows install (if you wipe the drive) does a 200M recovery partition and the OS on the next one. Unless you can salvage something from the prior install I'd say just start fresh.

Ya I guess I do answer a lot of the computer threads. Its the one thing I can definitively say I know a lot about. Well that and motorcycles (racing).

oh i guess i didn't understand your explanation before. I don't need any of the old info, i just need to reformat off the partition. My problem is that i can't find out how to get into the reformatting screen on startup. Any idea on how to? I tried F8 to find the repair option but it doesn't come up, im pretty sure you can do a complete reformat off that but its not that. Thanks for the info again sprack

 

[sprack]

If you're running off the Win7 install disc, get past the first screen that has the Install button. Then hit shift-F10, that'll bring up a command prompt. At the prompt type in "diskpart". In diskpart do: "sel disk 0", then "clean", then exit. Exit the command prompt. The installer from there should find an unpartitioned hard drive and go through the install.