Formatting Hard Drive on Win ME

[Jyno]

I want to reformat my hard drive and I'm running Win ME but I can't do it because windows says that the drive is being use by another process. Can anyone help me out?

[golfcart]

Easiest way is to boot with a windows 9x boot disk and do it from there. You can get one from bootdisk.com if you need one.

[solo-pc-tech]

Do you intend to reinstall Windows Me or do you have two hard drives and want to reformat the second one? If the latter, make sure that you are not displaying the contents of the second drive. Close all programs, go to My Computer, then right-click on the second drive and choose Format. If that still doesn't work, then you need to run MSCONFIG and turn off some startup items,or disable your AntiVirus program.

If you mean to re-install, just go to Control Panel, Add Remove Programs and create a Startup Disk.

[Jyno]

I just have one hard drive.

[elroy]

You cannot move, delete, rename any file that is currently in use. Since you are using Windows you can't format the drive as it would erase running files. You must boot the machine with a Windows boot disk [windows calls this a STARTUP disk]. Put the floppy in the A drive and start the machine. Select with cd or without cd [for formatting it doesn't matter] select "enable large drive support" if asked. At the A:\ type in format c: This will erase EVERYTHING on the drive. You can make a boot disk by going to MY COMPUTER>CONTROL PANEL>ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS>STARTUP DISK TAB
You might want to do some reading at bootdisk.com before you start, since I assume you'll want to re-install Windows ME.

[Jyno]

Yes, I want to re-install Win ME.