Why can't I reformat?

winterfreshpwnz

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I just tried it and when I was about to do it, it gave me this message saying, " Windows cannot format this drive. Quit any disk utilities or other programs that are using this drive, and make sure that no window is displaying the contents of this drive. Then try formatting again."

Uh what the heck.....
 
You can't reformat in windows. You have to press F8 (either that or F12) before windows boots. Make your comp boot from the CD drive first and continue letting windows start up. Then insert your Windows CD and restart. Then it will take you to a blue screen with several choices. Select the one that says "reinstall windows" or something like that. You should be able to figure it out from there.
 
Oh ok, thanks. I was actually thinking of trying something like that, but I didn't think that would actually end up deleting everything on the hdd.
 
No problem. I actually made that mistake when I was trying to reformat on Friday.
 
Well I just tried and I still can't....

I put the disc in, set the cd rom to the first boot priority, and then windows just loaded up like normal....
 
winterfreshpwnz said:
Well I just tried and I still can't....

I put the disc in, set the cd rom to the first boot priority, and then windows just loaded up like normal....
Are you sure it detected the CD to boot from?
 
What do you mean?

EDIT: BTW, I can run the disc while in windows and when it shows me my options, the first one is Install Windows XP, and if I click it, it gives me a blue screen with like installing instructions and stuff. Is this the same thing or does have it have to be done out of windows?
 
I think if you do it in windows it will make a dual boot OS, and it will install win xp on the HD a second time (not good)
 
Oh ok, well either way I just tried again, and even double checked that the first thing to boot was my cd rom (second is the floppy and third is the hdd). Still wouldn't work and even when I changed the settings to first cd rom, then floppy, and then cd rom again, leaving the hdd out of the equation, it just ended up giving me a message saying disk boot failure, please insert system disk and press enter.
 
Oh wait! I think I know why you boot up that disk. im so stupid for not remembering this. your windows XP cd, did you buy it to upgrade from a prior OS? because if you did then thats the problem, you probably have an upgrade disk. you cannot boot from an update disk, your gonna need to get a OEM win xp disk, they are bootable. to make sure that your disk is in fact bootable try using it to boot up in another comp. (booting not from windows). if it boots in the other computer, then im stumped. if it doesnt, then it's a upgrade disk.
 
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