how to reformat?

[Kermit]

can someone tell me how to reformat please go thru all the steps

thanks

 

[HammerBot]

You've got to be a lot more specific than that. Reformat can be done in many ways. What exactly are you up to?

You can simply use windows format to format any drive (except the boot drive) connected to the PC.
If you are reinstalling windows, the install program has the option to format the drive before installing.


<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[Kermit]

ok what i want to do is delete everything off the hdd how would i go about doing that?

 

[HammerBot]

Simply format it. What's the problem? Do you want to perform a secure erase so that its not posible to recover the data again?

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[Kermit]

how do i simply format it? i tried
format C: and i got this message:
Format cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Format may run if this volume is dismounted first.
ALLOPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID.
Would you like to force a dismount on thjis volume? (Y/N)

when i say Y
i get :
Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use.

i even get this when i made a ms-dospromt disk

 

[HammerBot]

You cannot format the boot drive from within windows (I suspect thats what you are trying) If you intend to reinstall the OS after the format you can simply boot from the install CD which gives you the option of formatting before installing the OS.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[Kermit]

ok ill try

 

[Kermit]

didnt work can you take me through the steps of getting the computer to boot through the cd-rom drive please

 

[HammerBot]

In order to boot from the CD rom drive, you have to enable it in the bios. This is very much dependent on the mobo you are using. Somewhere there should be an option that determines the boot order. You must set CD rom before harddisk.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[Kermit]

i did infact i set it all to cd-rom drive after i put cd-rom first and it didnt work argghhhh is there any other way>>

 

[HammerBot]

Are you sure your disc and CD rom drive is ok? You want to be sure of this, how else would you reinstall the OS if you succeed in formatting your harddrive?

Now that I think of it. You can also boot from a floppy boot disk (If you dont have one, you can create one from within windows. Can't remember exactly where though). The boot disk gives you the option of starting the install program from the CD.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[Kermit]

ya it works cuz i did it when i was installin it on my 200gig hdd imma try usin my dvd drive..

 

[HammerBot]

Don't expect me to understand such gibberish.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[HammerBot]

Don't expect me to understand such gibberish.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[Kermit]

ok sorry
forget what i said do you know any alternate methods to reformat?

 

[HammerBot]

If you have a second drive/PC you can install the disc you want to format there. Boot off the other drive and then format the one you installed. The problem is, as I said, Windows dont allow you to format the boot partition. So if you can boot off some other partition/disk, you should have no problem.

<i><b>Engineering is the fine art of making what you want from things you can get</b></i>

 

[jammydodger]

Make a bootable floppy disk, this can be done using windows 98 or ME. Alternitivly you can go to <A HREF="http://www.freedos.com" target="_new">http://www.freedos.com</A>. Once this is done and DOS is loaded type:
FORMAT C: /C

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[allanon1965]

what os you using? win98se you can make a bootable floppy in add/remove programs/start up disc. very simply put, insert floppy after its made, turn on puter, choose start computer WITHOUT cd rom support, at the a: prompt type format C: /u this gives you an unconditional format of c: when thats doen it will ask for a volume label, type C then hit enter. turn off puter and restart again, this time choose start computer WITH cd rom support. when its back to the a: prompt, type C: hit enter. at the c: prompt type md win98 then hit enter, insert win98se cd into cd rom, type E: hit enter(where E is your cd rom letter) at the E: prompt type copy win98 C:\win98 hit enter, now it will copy win98 cab files to hard drive, when its done, type C: then hit enter. at the C: prompt type win98\setup and it will take off, just follow the prompts and it will load, best of all is you wont have to insert the win98 cd when you install programs and such....also loads faster that way. im sure there are other ways to do this but this works great for me.

Fat, Drunk, and Stupid is no way to go through life Son.

 

[Saven]

if you're cd-rom/dvd-rom is set to cable select or slave... it may not boot to the cd-rom...must be master on some systems.

Are you installing xp? me? 98? 95?
they are a bit different when installing and formatting.