Ummm... Help?

[ChrisLDog]

:confused: Hey, probably a stupid question, but here's my situation:

I had a hard drive with an OS on it. I wanted to make that my primary hard drive C:. So I hook it up as a D: and try to reformat it. To my chagrine, the drive previously had an anti-virus program that I forgot to uninstall before I tried to reformat. Now it won't reformat at all. I just get a message saying "Windows was unable to format this drive". Any tips? Help? :sad: :happysad:

edit:
I'm running Windows XP Pro now, but the damaged drive was using Windows 2000 Pro. I don't know if that makes any difference...

[-Kosh-]

So, (making sure I understand rightly) you want to completely wipe your D: drive clean and use it for storage instead of housing an OS on it?

What OS are you using currently?

[ChrisLDog]

I want to wipe clean the damaged drive and use that as my new C:.

Also see above edit... :)

[-Kosh-]

okie,

hang on, lemme grab some visual aids. BRB.

[ChrisLDog]

Cool, thanks!

[Hero1]

kosh youre dildo aint solvin this problem...

[-Kosh-]

okay, this *should* allow you to delete the partition on the D: drive, regardless of what was one the drive previously. Hopefully you have a plan for installing a new OS on it and how to swap it over to be your new C: drive

Right-click "MY COMPUTER" on your desktop, and left-click on "MANAGE".




When the Computer Management window opens, left-click on "DISK MANAGEMENT" to see a representation of all your drives.




Find the drive you want to erase, and right-click it, then click on "DELETE PARTITION"




MAKE SURE IT'S THE CORRECT DRIVE!

Click the apropriate button on the window that pops up.



That should do it.


If you're going to do a clean install, from a bootable Windows XP Pro CDROM, you can leave it like it is, as the CD-ROM installation will let you create a partition and format it with NTFS during the install process.

[-Kosh-]

Originally posted by HieroHero@Mar 3 2004, 03:26 AM
kosh youre dildo aint solvin this problem...
:slap: Bish, please.

:P

[syxxpm]

holy shit tim that was cold :roll:

[ChrisLDog]

Thanks guys. I finally had to do a "low level format" whatever that means, and then I was able to reinstall windows. That dang format took about 7 hours!!! :madrant:

[Brian221]

f.y.i. - fdisk could have been used to wipe out the partition, then reformat.

[-Kosh-]

Originally posted by BrianCCXXI@Mar 5 2004, 03:13 PM
f.y.i. - fdisk could have been used to wipe out the partition, then reformat.
it could have, sure. However, no way was I gonna walk him through an FDISK remotely. :)

[Etherspin]

wow, the pictures, this forum is divine