Formatting a hard drive

[gmpaul6]

I got a new hard drive for my computer. I took out the old one and started to install windows xp pro. half way thru there was an error. The cd is no good. I got a copy of another windows xp froma friend and when I put this one in and turn on the computer the screen says resuming windows setup. a minute later there is an error message saying basically that this cd does not match the original one and is fatal.

How do I either format the drive or start fresh from this cd?

[ChrisXPPro]

Assuming you are posting from another puter - my thinking right now would be to find and download a basic bootable file set (including a few tools including fdisk or similar) - and burn those to a CD. 

Then use that to boot - do your format and then try again on a clean install from spare CD.

[patio]

If you boot to the XP CD you should have the option to remove/rebuild the existing partitions...

[ChrisXPPro]

If you boot to the XP CD you should have the option to remove/rebuild the existing partitions...

My initial thinking but - have the feeling this is one of those deals when that darned ''resuming'' message comes up straight away! 

Guess it may in part be due to stage at which the snafu on original CD happened.

[gmpaul6]

It comes right up to the resuming page and then says fatal error and wont let me continue. Where can I download the fdisk?

[patio]

Travel to bootdisk.com for all flavors of bootdisks.