External hard drive formatting?

Hey,
Is there any way to completely wipe the C: drive through the BIOS without having to pull the hard drive out and slap it into another PC as a slave drive?

Basically, I hit a wall while trying to install Windows XP Service Pack 3 over ME. There’s some leftover ME junk on the drive that didn't clear out, and now the XP setup won't copy files to move forward.

Would just formatting the whole drive actually fix this? 😵
I can't delete the C: partition or make a new one during the installation process.

I want to nuking every single byte and start the Windows XP Service Pack 3 install from scratch.
Spare me the smart comments about who still uses ME and XP these days.

Just burn Hiren to a disc, boot from it, and wipe the drive clean.
Or if you really need to, just try to revive the disk using some other tool on a CD.

Alternatively, you could just boot from a different Windows installer and wipe every single partition you see until the drive shows up as nothing but unallocated space. Once you've done that, just kill the installation process midway through—and boom, you're left with a completely blank hard drive...

brighttinker48 said:Strip it down and fry it. HirenJust boot from a disc and wipe it.
If you have to, just use some other tool from a disc to bring the drive back to life.

Thanks for the quick reply. I got it downloaded and found some burning instructions. Still need to swing by Target to grab some blank CDs, though.

Larry Ortiz5 said:Just grab some other Windows installer and boot from it. Wipe every single partition until you're looking at nothing but unallocated space. Then just kill the installation process mid-way. Boom. You've got a blank hard drive.

It’s useless. I spent a week trying to get this right, but it just keeps reinstalling Windows XP. It’s all one partition on the entire hard drive.

wiredgardener20 said:Thanks for the quick reply. I grabbed it and found some burning instructions. Still gotta hit up CVS or something to grab a blank CD, though.

It’s not working. I tried setting it up a week ago and it just keeps reinstalling XP again. It's all one partition on the whole hard drive.

You can actually open a command prompt at the start of the install and mess with the partitions however you want.

On Windows 10, it's Shift+F10, repair, stuff like that...
Maybe just Google how to do it on XP if you really have to use XP.

Fixed it using Boot and Nuko from Hiren's disc.
Thanks again for the help.