It depends how new your PC is. Anything built within the last five years should be able to boot off CD, but you generally need to go into the BIOS settings and make the CD the first boot device.
If this doesn't work, you may need to make boot disks, which do the first part of the install before looking for the CD. There's a utility on the CD for making these. However, if your PC can't boot off CD, chances are it won't be capable of having enough RAM for XP to be worthwhile.
Regarding formatting, there are a couple of routes you can take.
If the drive itself is suspect, the safest course is to download the utility from the manufacturer. Nowadays these are generally interchangable, but it's safest to check the make of hard disk and download the utility from that manufacturer. Generally these need to run from DOS, so you may need to make a DOS boot disk. You can get one here (or at least a utility to make one).
The utility will chack out the disk at the surface layer, and can perform a "low level format", which will move bits of the logical space around to avoid damaged areas.
If you're not concerned about the drive integrity, you can skip that step and use the Windows CD to delete existing partitions and create and format new ones. Alternatively, you can boot in DOS and use FDISK to delete and recreate partitions. But if you're installing Windows, you're probably best off using its installer.
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Date: 2004-12-04 03:43 pm (UTC)If this doesn't work, you may need to make boot disks, which do the first part of the install before looking for the CD. There's a utility on the CD for making these. However, if your PC can't boot off CD, chances are it won't be capable of having enough RAM for XP to be worthwhile.
Regarding formatting, there are a couple of routes you can take.
If the drive itself is suspect, the safest course is to download the utility from the manufacturer. Nowadays these are generally interchangable, but it's safest to check the make of hard disk and download the utility from that manufacturer. Generally these need to run from DOS, so you may need to make a DOS boot disk. You can get one here (or at least a utility to make one).
The utility will chack out the disk at the surface layer, and can perform a "low level format", which will move bits of the logical space around to avoid damaged areas.
If you're not concerned about the drive integrity, you can skip that step and use the Windows CD to delete existing partitions and create and format new ones. Alternatively, you can boot in DOS and use FDISK to delete and recreate partitions. But if you're installing Windows, you're probably best off using its installer.