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formatting disk

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I want to format my hard drive, but when i click on the format button a dialog box comes up and says that it cant format because windows is currently using the drive( or something of that effect). What do I do?

6 replies

by kcmeister

Depending on what operating system you have, you can restart the computer, press F8 repeatedly until start up menu appears, choose command prompt only, and type format c:, answer yes to the warning and it will format. Otherwise use a boot disk, at a: prompt type format c: .You can't format your drive while in windows. Win2k, boot from cd, do clean install and can format during setup. If you have more than one partition, you will need your boot disk, type fdisk, delete partitons, beginning with logical, extended, then primary dos. After fdisk, then format c:.
good luck
kcmeister

by curacao_dejavu

create a startup disk with the command format on it (while at it copy the commands: fdisk, copy, deltree and edit too).
boot with the startup disk and format the disk.
reason: if you have only 1 hd you can not format it while using the disk/os, 2:if you have more partitions the partition you want to format may not be displaying files. Use my computer than and format the drive with a right klik => format.

Leopold

by dmiles

If this is a clean drive
Insert a Windows 9x startup disk in floppy drive
at the command prompt type in format C: (C: is the letter of drive to be formatted
If you are trying to format a extended partition,Open My Computer and right-click on thedrive(designated drive letter) in the drop down list select format.

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