3rd Party Formatting tools?

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Does anyone know of a good freeware formatting tool? I basically wanna wipe vista off my system and put Xp pro on my laptop, I've tried to downgrade it but it blue screens on the driver for DVD drive, I was hoping to just wipe the drive and start again.

Any suggestions? thanks

 

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Why do you need a third-party tool to do this?

Just (back-up your important files and then...) boot to your XP Pro CD and wipe your hard-drive from the wizard.

Qs

 

That's how I'd do it.

 

format c:

 

I would do the same or you could use kill disk or a magnet

 

I've tried to boot it from the XP disk but it just crashes when it loads the drivers for the DVD drive. I was thinking that cause I'm getting shot of Vista anyway I didn't really want to have to mess around with installing drivers before intalling XP.

 

install it on a VM first and see it crashes then when loading the driver for the DVD drive.
if it does not crash, back all your data up, and run a kill disk and reinstall.
whats the make model of your DVD drive?

 

If your using SATA Drives (Hard Drive, or in this case, the DVD) and the drives are set to use AHCI mode, then you are going to have problems getting XP to install correctly. There are two solutions:

1) Go into the BIOS on the PC and modify anything that says AHCI mode to IDE/ISO/Compatibility mode for your storage controllers (there should be some sort of backwards compatibility mode that isn't AHCI, varies by vendor)

OR

2) Go find the AHCI compliant drivers for your DVD/Hard Drive and press F6 to load 3rd party drivers when prompted when you boot from the XP CD.

The first option is fastest, the 2nd option...well...might want to do a little reading on AHCI devices in XP. If you choose option 1, you won't be able to load XP, and then go back into the BIOS after the fact and modify the AHCI setting; if you do this you will make your system non-bootable. As for wiping out your old installation of Vista:

There you go. That’s the easiest quickest path I can think of to get rid of Vista. Hope it works out for you, since you were running Vista previously I thought maybe you were running into the AHCI thing.

If that’s it, let us know? Talk soon

J.

PS: ummmm....I hope your XP CD is good. *lol* Would be funny if it was just corruption on the CD itself. Should probably check that too.

 

possibly overkill for this particular application but I use DBAN to wipe our machines usually when they're being retired or returned to manufacturer. DBAN is a great little live CD you throw in, follow the wizard and leave it to wipe your hdd.

Personally I'd just boot of an XP disc, destroy all local partitions and go from there

 

Killdisk. It does exactly what it says on the tin.
Also, try reinstalling XP with SP3 slipstreamed into it - I had a batch of lappys a while back that wouldn't work with anything pre SP3 - even with SATA native mode disabled in the BIOS. Ran the XPSP3 CD and they worked first time. Weirdsville.

 

I use a utility called WipeDrive, does a low level format so nothing is left behind.

Hope this helps ?