[speedrunner]

Can someone please tell me how to go about wiping everything off of my hard drive. I have a Gateway Desktop running ME and used approx 3/4 the space of a 20gb hard drive. I want to clear it off and install XP.

Thank you

[cwwozniak]

Hi speedrunner, and welcome to TSG.

If you want to totally wipe the drive, DBAN should do it for you.
http://www.dban.org/

[flavallee]

The XP CD does all the work. You insert the XP CD and boot from it, delete all current partitions, create a new C partition, format it in the NTFS file system, then install XP.

Each screen that appears tells you which key to press to perform a function. The entire process from start to finish involves 2 restarts.

You'll need a full version XP CD. If you have a 98 CD or a ME CD, you can use an upgrade version XP CD.

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A 20 GB hard drive will do okay for XP, as long as you don't install a lot of space-hungry programs afterwards.

You didn't mention the processor speed and the amount of RAM in that computer.

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[irdaneel]

If you have only 256mb of RAM (or less) don't even try to install XP. It says it works, and it does, sort of. Even with 512mb XP is a slug. Windows 2000 sp4 however is a viable option for both, but with 512 it runs well. You may even be happier reinstalling your ME, though if you have 98 it's better.

Give it a try and see how it works with XP if you have 512mb or more. If you don't like it (it will be slow a lot) you can always reformat and reinstall again with another, less RAM-hungry OS.