format partition fails

[stephen]

I have an Acer aspire 3680 with Vista Home Basic pre-installed.
There are two partitions C and D. I was playing with the D and now it won't
format at all.
The space is unallocated and when I choose new simple volume it says
"operation could not be completed because the disk management console is not
up to date"
When it starts formatting I get a popup that windows discovered new hardware
unidentified device and it can never figure out what the device is.

Please, help. Thank you.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

First, I do hope you realize that D: was likely your recovery volume that
would allow you to reinstall the operating system should something go
drastically wrong. If you've deleted the volume, then you should contact the
manufacturer (Acer) about obtaining recovery media to guard against
disaster. They may charge a nominal fee for this, but the alternative would
be to go out and purchase a new copy of Vista.

As to what you've done, I would use a tool like mbrwork (terabyteunlimited)
to get a better look at what's going on.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[stephen]

Rick,

The recovery is in a hidden partition, which is before the C partition. It
is healthy. C (boot) is also healthy. D was empty.
do you know how to reformat using the hidden partition?

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Open an elevated command prompt (start, type CMD, right click entry in the
program menu and choose 'run as administrator'), then run:

Diskpart

That will change the prompt, then run:

List Volume

Post back with the results (use edit/mark to drag over the results, then
edit/copy to paste into a response).

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com