Please help - Need to format hard drive???

[badbilly27]

I have a server that is running windows server 2000 on it and need to format the computer hard drive completely. I've tried two courses of action with no luck at all:

1. Control Panel-administrative functions-disk management-format (cannot format drive with windows on it)

2. Used a win98 boot disk - choose msdos from bottom of page - a: came up - typed format c:\ - invalid command

Please help. I'm baffled.

 

[badbilly27]

Actually the message I'm getting on the win 98 boot disk - format c: - is format not supported on drive c:

Please Help

 

[Quad]

i'll assume that there's only 1 harddisk in the computer...and that windows is running on the partition that you want to format

if it said "invalid command" when u typed "format c:\" it's probably because the format program isn't present on the disk. go to www.bootdisk.com and download a windows98se bootdisk. run the exe and load the image onto a floppy. boot off of the floppy and try again. should be fine

 

[MisterDuck]

You could just run the setup again for W2K, although formatting the hard drive at all is going to trash the current install of the OS assuming you're formatting the same partition on which it resides.

...also I think you have to boot up with the win98 disk to use the tools, but I could be mistaken...the format program on that disk should work too...


You do know this is going to trash the current install of w2k, right? Just making sure...

 

[badbilly27]

Thanks Quad and MisterDuck. Unfortunatley it didn't work. I went to bootdisk.com, downloaded win98se, mirrored it onto the floppy, booted from that, and typed format c: and got "invalid drive specification"

I'm trying to wipe the entire system completely clean as I just sold it to someone and need to ship it off today. I'm running windows 2000 sever on it. Man is this harder than I remember formatting a drive.

Any other suggestions?

 

[badbilly27]

Will fidsk do anything? The hard drive is partioned with c and d - but that shouldn't be causing me a problem should it?

 

[boyRacer]

Even if it did work... Win98 will not be able to format it correctly. Im guessing your drive is formatted as NTFS and Win98 will just format it back to FAT32. Its possible but your work would just double. Just download Partition Magic 7 and format it from there... that is if you're Windows is still functional.

 

[jurzdevil]

when you use the boot disk it makes another virtual drive. i have had it happen to me where the c: is changed to the d:. Did this happen to you? type dir on d: and c: and see which one windows is on.

 

[badbilly27]

I typed dir c and dir d and nothing. won't even let me change drives except a.

I'm downloading the demo version of partion magic 7 now but if anyone else can advise on how to clean this machine please let me know.

 

[badbilly27]

Well that got me nowhere unfortunately. Partition Magic 7 demo wouldn't let me run it on windows 2000 NT Server OS. Anyone else have an idea how to format this puppy.

 

[wolfsblood]

I'm pretty sure your problem is that it cannot recognize the NTFS partition, what I did to format one of my Win2k drives was I just deleted the partition made a new FAT 32 one and formatted that. I assume this should work if you're going to be formatting the whole drive.

 

[badbilly27]

Wolfsblood...thanks. I think that was it. I used fdisk and deleted both partitions that existed. The system would not boot "NO ROMBASIC System Halted" came up. I'm going to try and create a partition like you mentioned and format from there. If not, screw it at this point - I'm shipping this puppy and forgetting about win2k forever!!! UGh

 

[badbilly27]

Success!! Thanks to all and especially wolfsblood. For anyone needing to do this in the future you need to:

1. get a boot disk (bootdisk.com)

2. Run fdisk

3. Delete all partitions

4. Restart with boot disk

5. format c:

What a painful learning experience. I miss the days of old where you just went into dos and typed format. Thanks to all who responded.