Well, I thought the fact that the option was there, albeit greyed out (and I
was following the instructions from Vista on how to format the hard drive)
that you *could* format from within Vista! I have done it before on a
previous operating system, but that might have been 98.
I will try with the installation CD. I have heard that there are problems
with trying to do this when downgrading from Vista to XP (and specificially
on Dell machines) so trying to cover all the bases before going ahead
"Rock" wrote:
> "jane0601" <jane0601@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote
> > I'm trying to format my hard drive (Vista Home Premium) so that I can
> > reinstall Windows XP. However, when I follow the instructions, the
> > 'format'
> > option is greyed out.
>
> You can't format drive that has Vista installed on it from within Vista.
> Think about it. You couldn't do this in XP either. The proper way to
> remove Vista and install XP is boot from the XP installation CD and do a
> clean install. It has all the tools needed to partition, format and
> install. Here is a link with info on how to do a clean install.
>
> http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
>
> --
> Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]
>
>