I have a partitioned hard drive using XP home with NTFS.  The drive had
originally been formatted with NTFS - it has only "known" XP.  I recently
attempted to do a complete reformat of the drive in order to re-partition
and do a complete cleanup and reinstall.  I couldn't get it to format in
XP (C would not dismount) so I ended up using Maxtor's powermax (it is a
Maxtor drive).  I made the mistake (I think) of doing a low level format.
I repartitioned and reinstalled XP.  That is where I stand.  I can't
remove the Recovery Console following Microsoft's directions.  When
booting it stops at a black screen and asks for one of two choices - one
of which I can't see (the cursor will move up or down but the one choice
is not visible).  No matter which one I choose however they both go into
XP.  When shutting down the computer used to shut off automatically - it
no longer does.

To my way of thinking - I need to clean up the drive and particularly the
MBR (or whatever it is called in XP) and then do another install of XP.
How can I properly reformat the drive and completely get rid of the MBR?

Regards,
Paul Ecclestone

Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it has been put to practical use.

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