I have done many reinstalls of FS2004 but it has been a very long time since I have re-installed the Operating System (XP).One question for anyone who has done it recently - does the Install program offer an option to FORMAT the destination drive prior to starting the install? I just cannot remember.I need to reformat my HD - caught a nasty computer virus over the Holidays - and if the install program offers that option, it will save me hunting down a bootable utility disk.Thanks in advance. :(

A virus checker will usually check the boot sector for a nasty boot sector virus. If so restart (cold boot) your PC with the BIOS set to boot from the CD with the XP CD installed. This insures that a boot sector virus has not been loaded. I think you can go into a command window from there by selecting it from a repair menu. Do dir and see if FDISK.exe is available. If so then fdisk/b or fdisk/r - can't recall - will for sure overwrite your boot sector on your HD destroying any virus lurking there (and all your partitions, etc). If you go into the maintenance menu (repair?) on the XP CD there are several options there as I recall including overwriting everything else with a format. Formatting alone will not get rid of a boot sector virus. A reinstall from that point will be from scratch.

Yes, set your bios to boot from the DVD/CD drive and boot with your XP disk in the drive. It will then boot from the disk (maybe asking you to hit "any" key to boot from the CD/DVD).XP will ask to repair or install. It will also ask for a short or long format.I recently installed Vista 64 bit and the format took 2 seconds. With XP it takes 15 minutes or so (500GB drive).