Ummm... Help?

: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...

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?

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

Also see above edit... :)

okie,

hang on, lemme grab some visual aids. BRB.

Cool, thanks!

kosh youre dildo aint solvin this problem...

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".

http://www.minbari.net/images/formatting_01.gif

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

http://www.minbari.net/images/formatting_02.gif

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

http://www.minbari.net/images/formatting_03.gif

MAKE SURE IT'S THE CORRECT DRIVE!

Click the apropriate button on the window that pops up.

http://www.minbari.net/images/formatting_04.gif

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.

Quote:

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

:slap: Bish, please.

:P

holy shit tim that was cold :roll:

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:

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

Quote:

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. :)

wow, the pictures, this forum is divine