need hard drive help

[cricket]

here is what i am trying to accomplish:
i took all the guts from my dell demension 8200 , including hard drive with data on it, and install all into a new case with a new motherboard(intel 850emvr). when i first fired up system it said i neede to reactivate my winxp. so i did that, it works ok like this but now i want to erase the whole hard drive completely and install a regular version (retail, not the OEM version that dell put on hard drive). so how can i completely erase the hard drive to install the new winxp home version? i tried booting from new winxp cd and followed promts but everytime i get done it still has some leftover folders from my previous install that dell put on the hard drive with the oem install. is there anyway to get rid of this and if yes what program or what procedure do i do? im almost ready to say the heck with this and just buy a new hard drive, then i know it will be completewly clean/empty before i install the new winxp retail version.
if someone can help please reply....thanks

[kraigc]

i did the exact same thing and just followed the winxp cd......hard drive later blew up and i bought a new one though......

[Smokey]

Could you not stick it in another computer as a slave drive, and then format it from within windows under disk manager?

[Malfunction]

Ya need to delete all the partitions on that drive. Dell puts a hidden partition (Well, most OEMs do) and it is an archive of all the software that the machine originally had. The CD-ROM they give you (rescue disc) has various utilities and batch files to orchestrate a refresh of the HD the way it was purchase.

I've always used Delpart to take care of the HD. *Beware - once executed, that's it... the HD is clean. If you accidently execute it, you are SOL. You can read more about it in a google search or go here: http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm

Peace,

:afro:

[cricket]

i got some help from someone that said to use fdisk, tried it, erased hard drive,installed new partition and then winxp OS......all is well...bye bye dell stuff.
it was a winme bootdisk with the fdisk utility on it and then i followed blackviper.com direction for erasing...work's great. blackviper said best to use the winme boot disk, even though i had winxp already on HD. either way it worked, so im a happy camper.

[ALobpreis]

Why didn't you just delete the partition in the WinXP installation and then repartition the drive??