text: formating windows xp? this is what i am trying to do. i want to format windows xp pro from a lap top. i have neither a floppy drive for it or the xp pro disk as i have bought this from a friend. i know you can use the windows 98 boot disk to format it (done it once before but forgot how) what i need is someone to show me how to do this and give me a link to a 98 boot disk i can put onto a cd instead of floppy, also if anyone has a good step by step guide of how to do the 98 method of formatting a xp computer please post that also. thanks ahead of time! --dude, she doesn't have a floppy drive  yes you could put it on a bootable cd.  give us a little more info because i don't want to cause you to do something you don't want.  format = erase everything  so you want to erase everything on your hard drive?  do you want to reinstall windows afterwards?  if you want to reinstall windows afterwards, you need a real windows cd, not one of those recovery cds.  you could take the hard drive out of the laptop and stick it in a desktop computer and format it from there (though you might need an adapter).  i've done this before.