Hello,
My PC came with XP installed on a partition rather than on a CD so I use a restore disk to revert back to factory setting. ( I have an official license key)
however I now wish to format my C drive completely and borrowed a friends CD of XP to do so.
but I cannot do it !!!!
I always get error screens ( STOP message ) and have to reboot before the process is complete !!! it only just begins !!!
I have a RAID BIOS for mother board is this the problem ??
it gives me the option to press F6 to select a RAID driver but then wants it in A drive when I only have a CD of drivers ???

If your hard drive is a SATA drive then you need those drivers at F6.

You need to put them on a floppy from the CD then insert the floppy when instructed.

Also if you had XP SP2 your CD must be XP SP2 as windows will not downgrade itself.

Why not just use the Factory Restore from the hard drive?

I tried the factory restore but it isnt a "clean" restore
I still had registery entries etc.
my original problem is that NeroVision crashes or stops during the transcoding phase when converting an AVI to DVD format !
it worked for over a year with no problems but after other installs ( I think maybe WinAVI but not sure ) it fails during transcoding.
thought if I reformatted from scratch it would be OK ??
Thanks for the swift reply JEFREE !!

Most manufacturers offer a non-destructive and destructive recovery option.

This corresponds to Microsoft's Repair or Clean Install.

The destructive recovery should set the registry and everything else back to as new condition.

Anyway if you want to load an independent version of XP you need the SATA drivers if it is a SATA hard drive and you need an XP SP2 CD or else you would have to pre format the drive outside of windows.

You could do this with GParted if you really want to. Removing the original OS will void any warranties on that computer.

tired putting drivers on floppy !!
got this message :-
cannot find txtsetup.oem
done a search for txtsetup.oem and copied it to floppy
but get an error when trying to install after F6 ??

What is the make and model of the motherboard?

Or perhaps the make and model of the computer?

If we can find the driver site it might have the best drivers plus installation methods.

This is what I was driving at.

The computer is a Tiny Thunder 3400+ AMD Athlon 64 .
Mother board make is MSI but unsure how to find out the model ??

My motherboard is made by MSI unsure of which model ??
is there anyway I can find this out other than opening my pc up ??
My PC brand is Tiny Thunder 3400+ Athlon 64 bit if that is any help ??
so its the SATA hard drive driver I need or the Mother board drivers ??

As Tiny is out of business that is a dead end. At least directly.

Can you still boot the computer? If so install CPU_Z and look under Mainboard > Model

There are specific SATA/RAID drivers for the motherboard.