Trying to format my hard drive... "I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that."

[Whoozyerdaddy]

I've backed up all my junk. I have my operating system disk in the drive ready to go...

But when I go to format C: it tells me to eff off. I'm clueless here.

 

[Flammable]

....troll

 

[Whoozyerdaddy]

Originally posted by: Flammable
i love uhohs

Thanks for all your help

 

[bonkers325]

boot from the cd and try again

 

[tasmanian]

ctrl a then shift delete. Then reformat.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Dude, are you trying to format C: while in Windows?! Think about it....

Boot from the OS disc, go into setup, and then follow the prompts.

 

[Cyco]

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky
Dude, are you trying to format C: while in Windows?! Think about it....

Boot from the OS disc, go into setup, and then follow the prompts.

Tits...
Is it possible to boot to DOS these days?

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: Cyco

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky
Dude, are you trying to format C: while in Windows?! Think about it....

Boot from the OS disc, go into setup, and then follow the prompts.

Tits...
Is it possible to boot to DOS these days?

Yeah, why wouldn't it?

 

[LS8]

Pretty much all MS/Linux OS media is bootable these days... set your BIOS to boot from the CD and follow the on screen prompts - for MS media you will need to hit the "any" key... I assume your keyboard has one of those.

 

[Cyco]

Originally posted by: TallBill

Originally posted by: Cyco

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky
Dude, are you trying to format C: while in Windows?! Think about it....

Boot from the OS disc, go into setup, and then follow the prompts.

Tits...
Is it possible to boot to DOS these days?

Yeah, why wouldn't it?

OK, better question...do people these days know how to boot into DOS?

 

[Jeff7]

DBAN will erase the drive quite throughly.

There is also zap, a very small DOS utility originally made by IBM, which can quickly purge the partition info from a drive, making it look completely empty. I've always used it with a bootable floppy or CD; I'd imagine it would work just as well with a bootable USB thumbdrive.

Once either of those utilities is done:
Put OS CD into the drive.
Boot off of OS CD.
It should let you partition and format the drive.

 

[LS8]

FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.EXE work fine if that's all you want to do...

I haven't formatted a drive with a 3rd party program in heck, over 5 years.

I always use whatever partitioning and formating tools that come on the OS media.

 

[Aluvus]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
DBAN will erase the drive quite throughly.

There is also zap, a very small DOS utility originally made by IBM, which can quickly purge the partition info from a drive, making it look completely empty. I've always used it with a bootable floppy or CD; I'd imagine it would work just as well with a bootable USB thumbdrive.

Once either of those utilities is done:
Put OS CD into the drive.
Boot off of OS CD.
It should let you partition and format the drive.

There is no need to erase the drive beforehand, unless you actually want to perma-nuke the data. Boot from operating system CD, use its tools.

Originally posted by: TallBill

Originally posted by: Cyco

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky
Dude, are you trying to format C: while in Windows?! Think about it....

Boot from the OS disc, go into setup, and then follow the prompts.

Tits...
Is it possible to boot to DOS these days?

Yeah, why wouldn't it?

Because all versions of Windows based on the NT kernel (including XP, Vista, etc.) are not based on and do not come with DOS. So you would have to choose to install DOS separately, or use a bootable DOS disk.