Can not Reformat my Hard drive..............

[heike]

Please go to this website http://discussions.virtualdr.com/Forum2/HTML/042040.html
and read. I try to get some help to format my hard drive
Thanks

[Steve R Jones]

That link is to entirly different forum and it looks like your getting great response????


Why not ask your remaining question here????

[heike]

yes I do get some great response.The reason why I ask here is maybe somebody has (had)the same problem as i have.
I thought if I put the link in here,would be the same as me asking again,so all you have to do is just go that link.
Well to make it easy here is my question.
I Restart in MS-DOS mode. I'm now presented with a prompt of: C:\Windows>
At the prompt,I type CD..
now I see a C:\>
now I type FORMAT C:
I Turn off my computer and put the Windows Startup Disk in A: drive
I turn my Computer back on I select Start Computer with CD-ROM support
I insert the Windows 98 CD
The next thing I see is
Can not create a temporary directory. If you have HPFS or NTFS installed on your hard drive, you will need to create an MS-DOS boot partition to set up Windows.I do have all the Drivers I need,I did make a new bootdisk.I did download delpart.exe and everything works fine until I get to the Windows 98 setup screen
When I get to the screen where it tells me Preparing to run Windows 98 setup it goes all the way up to 100 but then I get this message.
WINDOWS 98 WAS UNABLE TO UPDATE YOUR SYSTEM FILES. THIS MAYBE CAUSED BY VIRUS DETECTION THAT IS BUILD IN TO YOUR COMPUTER OR BY VIRUS DETECTION SOFTWARE RUNNING ON YOUR COMPUTER. TO DISABLE VIRUS DETECTION SOFTWARE RUNNING ON YOUR COMPUTER, YOU MAY NEED TO REMOVE THE LINES THAT START THE PROGRAM FROM YOUR AUTOEXEC.BAT OR CONFIG.SYS FILE
Well I do have Norton Virus but I did remove the lines in autoexec.bat. I don't see anything in config.sys. I did went to BIOS setup (CMOS)to disable virus but it was already disabled. Here is a nother thing what happen.
Windows 98 has detected that drive C does not contain a valid Fat or Fat32 partition. There are several possible causes.
The drive may need to be partitioned. To create a partition on the drive, run FDISK from the MS-DOS command prompt.
And so on.
Well I'm not an expert with Computer stuff,the reason why I know a little about format hard drive is I was searching for it and found some information on it.
Thanks

[Hellmund]

What I'd do it boot from the start-up disk, use the format.com located on the disk and type format c: /s. Reboot and you should be take to a prompt c:\ and there should be no active directories or anything. Install your CDROM driver or use the Start-up disk universal driver and get setup started. Any so called "virus" will be gone and when you rebooted it should have cleared the memory as well. Should work then. Post if it doesn't work.

[cedar2]

1. You can`t format c: from c: - Use your startup disk and format from a:
2. You probably have Disk Manager or EZ-Bios loaded, it is an install utility that many hdd manufacturers use to overcome bios limitations and install drives. You can eliminate it by using FDISK to remove existing partitions on the drive and set up new ones. This will allow you to format the drive. You could also download the install utility for your particular drive manufacturer and use it to set up and format the drive.

[benchristian]

you can format c: from c:! I do it all the time...format.com is loaded into memory before the format begins.

[codybear]

http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/clean1.html

[shadow]

I usually go into fdisk, delete any partitions, format without system files and then the command fdisk /mbr

[cedar2]

"you can format c: from c:! I do it all the time...format.com is loaded into memory before the format begins."

I learn something new every day!

[heike]

I just want to say Thank you all for your Help.
I did what jtdoom said in other forum said and it worked.
Thank you all for your Help.
Heike