Help with formatting/other issues

[MitchellD94]

Alright, so I have a few problems but let me start out by explaining my situation a little bit. So In this computer I had a SSD and a HDD and after using the computer for about 4ish years I've had many problems dealing with the SSD because it is a small 30gb drive. I bearly had enough space on the SSD for the OS so I had many many storage problems and it has been frustrating me for a long time so yesterday I decided **** it and straight up took out the SSD. So after installing windows 7 on my HDD and starting up I've noticed some problems. First off I could not connect to the Internet. I use a wired connection and I have a Comcast router but it gives me the error message "Local Area Connection doesn't have a valid IP configuration" and I tried to toy around with that and read a million different threads and I could not figure out the issue. So after about an hour of no luck I decided I should format my HDD because it's something I've been meaning to do and maybe it would help my problem so I tried formatting my computer with the OS disk and the option to format is grayed out so it wouldn't let me. Also My computer says the network adaptor is up to date so I don't think that is the problem with the Internet issue.

 

[Skyl3r]

Hey Mitchell,

Formatting your HDD
I think you may be having a little bit of confusion here with your operating system. Are you attempting to format your HDD from within Windows? If so, you will run into quite a bit of trouble with that. Windows is relying on it's installation to run and you are trying to wipe out the installation while it's running.

If you want to format your HDD, first realize you will have to reinstall Windows 7 and you will lose your data.

Simply insert the Windows 7 CD into your computer and boot into the installation. During the installation, you will see a screen that asks where you want to install windows. On this screen, you can click Advanced and you will get the option to Erase (format) a drive.

(Image from sevenforums, see look to tutorial here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html)

Internet Connection

Set your connection to receive settings via DHCP
As far as your internet is concerned, I'd first make sure that you have your computer set to receive it's connection via DHCP. To do this, you will go to Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center -> Change adapter settings.
From here, right click Local Area Connection and click Properties. (If prompted for Administrator rights, click Yes.) Single left click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click Properties. Make sure that both "Obtain an IP address automatically" and "Obtain DNS server address automatically" are checked. If they are not, go ahead and test your internet connection again.

It should look like this:

If it does look like the image above, then go to another computer on the network or a device and open command prompt (start -> type "CMD" -> hit enter) and type: ipconfig and hit enter again. (if you have an android device, you can download an IPCONFIG from the Google Play Store, such as this one here.) Write down this computer or device's IPv4 Address, Subnet Mask and Default Gateway that show up under Local Area Network Connection and return to your other computer.

Information to copy down:

Follow the steps to get to your Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) settings mentioned above again. This time, you will click the radio button for "Use the following IP address:" Fill in the IP address you copied down, but change the last octet. For example:
Other computer's IP: 192.168.1.154
IP to type in to your computer: 192.168.1.156

For the DNS, you can use Google's DNS:
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

It will look something like this, except with your IP addresses and masks:

(You may want to try pinging the new IP address from your other computer to verify it's not already taken. To do this, just type ping and then the IP address. In our case, it would look like this:
ping 192.168.1.156
If it times out and no response is received, then you can safely set your computer to this IP address.)

Verification an IP isn't in use:

Then enter the Subnet mask and Default gateway exactly as you copied it down.

Test your connection again.


Let me know if you have any success with this.