How do I force a format of a C: drive on a WDC2500bevt 250GB Dell laptop

I’m trying to reinstall Windows XP on a Dell Insperion 1525 laptop.  We do not have the recovery disks and I’m using a license-able copy of XP Professional SP2.  I need to erase the partition on the disk as the XP install process recognizes the existing partition and cancels the install.

How can I access the disk at the BIOS level to force a format?

Hi, from the same installation interface you should see the option to format the hard drive.