How do I wipe my HD? Just keeps creating partitions.

I understand there may be other forums pertaining to this, but sorry after sitting here slammin keys for over 3 hours, I dont have the time or patience to go thru them & find it, plus most of the time they dont match my problem...

IDK what happened to the p.o.s., but some reason my 2 dvd burners stopped being recognized & was having other problems, so decided to just start over by wiping it clean & starting over again.

Anytime I put the windows xp disk in & press F10 on startup, all ist does is take me to system recovry, which then created 2 more partitions instead of asking me if I wanted to wipe the C partition.

Its not longer giving me the option to boot straight from the disk & I'm about to just yank the HD out, put 20 magnets on it & throw in the recycling bin so before I go to that extreme, can someone please help me asap.

Its been a while since I've been on here but this is the info I think u might need:

Windows XP home edition
1gb ram (yaya lol)
160gb HD
Not sure what else might be needed but please some1 help me cause I can't afford a new comp & dont even think I can afford a new HD either.

 

So you just want to wipe it all and start over?

What I would do is create a bootable Parted Magic disk, then use it to delete all partitions and create a new primary partition to reinstall your OS on it.

 

ok sorry but that is gibberish to me. Am I going 2 need a cd-rom to get that parted magic thing? Cause thats what created this whole prob, my dvd-roms arent readin so have no way 2 make back-ups or cds to start up from. Would it be able 2 d/l onto a SD card since that reader is still working & have a 16gb SD card I could use

 

LOL sorry, shoulda went to that site & read a lil b4 my last reply, but I'm gonna d/l it to usb stick & then go from there. Hopefully that'll do the job. But in case it doesn't, is there any other ways I can wipe it completely w/o my cd-roms workin properly?

 

If your computer can boot from a USB stick, otherwise you have to find a working computer to burn your Parted magic disk.

 

ok thanks for letting me know to use diff comp cause IDK if it'll read from a stick. I waited until this morning 2 mess w/ it so had a non-frustrated head. Now time for all the fun 2 start lol

 

great, now its not reading either the XP or PartedMagic disk on start-up, just jumps it & goes straight from the HD. Now I'm stuck....

 

A lot of desk top systems won't allow you to boot from a USB device (whereas most lapyops will), mine certainly won't. If yours does, you'd probably have to into the BIOS at boot-up time and change the boot device/order. If it's going to allow to to boot from another device it'll be in the options there.

Dumb_Question
28.November.2012
Compaq Presario S5160UK (DT261A, Celeron 2.7 GHz) - MSI MS6577 v2.1 - XP SP3 - 1.5GB RAM (1GB + 512MB) - Nvidia Geforce 6200 graphics card 256MB on board RAM