I need to format my hdd from the boot..how - Acer Aspire 4315-2490 Notebook

restart your computer witht he XP cd in your drive and maiing sure it boots to cd by either pressing F12 or going into your bios and setting the priority to cd first then hard drive second after you have done this if it still cant see the hard drive then the hard drive has developed a fault and will need replacing if you havent formatted it yet try and see if it boots up to windows 7 if it does then it means the xp cant format the drive. if you have more problems then please use the comment below to describe whats being done. Kronoguy

you need to format your HDD before using it. Windows uses NTFS file system, so use some disk utility to format HDD.

Plug it into a computer and down load updates and drivers.

you must use livecd to boot your hdd,then back up all your files to an external hdd,then you are going to reformat your drive to boot it normally.use a working pc to get files..in iso format...save it then burn with your iso burner..you can get the files here>http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
After you've burning,turn on your not booting machine ,place it to cd drive of your machine and it boots,insert your usb or an external hdd then copy all files needed

HELLO, Is your laptop booting normally before it suddenly stops booting from the HDD.If it is this case then you need to format the HDD with window xp, i suggest.reason being that window xp support USB automatically. hope this helps Regards

here's some ideas:
________________________

I fixed my ps3!! All you need is a friend with a ps3!! Swap the hdd's and boot up your friends ps3, format the hdd, put it back in your ps3 and you may need to format it again.
_______________________________________________________


I tried to fix my friend's PS3 HDD that way in mine...it still gave an error every time he booted up his PS3. At that point I stuck the PS3 HDD in my laptop, booted from a Windows CD and fully formatted it that way...stuck it back in his machine...used it to format....finally got his stuff going. Took a little extra time but no problems since.

First put the hdd installation cd into the cd drive and try to boot. This should install the hdd driver as well as start formatting the new hdd. After the drive is formatted take out the hdd cd & insert the Windows installation cd into the drive. Boot. Windows should start installing on your new drive. After Windows is installed check the Dell support site for updated drivers for your system. Install drivers as needed. Any other software you had on your old drive will need to be reinstalled to the new drive. Hope this helps & please rate my answer. Thanks.

you probably have to format the new drive in your computer. It is rare to find a plug and play HDD. Do this either by right clicking on the drive in windows and selecting format. Or in dos by typing Format d: or if it is your c:\ drive you will need to boot off a boot disk which it sounds like you got the boot but if it is a drive the computer boots off you need to type format c:/s the /s makes the drive bootable

system bios is not set on auto find of hdd or you might have to enter parameters yourself for hdd
or just corrupted files which requires a compaq driver setup disk some compaq are like that
can boot off sys. disk

You can connect your HDD as primary or secondary, doesn't make any difference, anyway as you said I also suggest you to put it as primary. When you insert the Windows XP installation disk and you boot from your CD-Rom it will shows you all the disk and partition asking where do you want to install it.

(To boot from CD you have to enter in the BIOS and change the device priority at boot, let me know if you know how to do that)

At this point from the installation of XP you select your HDD, select to format as NTFS (Better then FAT32) and you start the installation.

At the end of the installation Windows XP will modify your MBR (Master Boot Record) to add a dual boot including Win95.

Be carefull that at  the end of the installation from XP you will be able to read files on the old HDD containing Win95 but not viceversa, because Win95 cannot read NTFS partitions.