Format problems

[Guest]

Hi everybody! Hope someone can steer me in the right direction here! I have
a used DELL laptop that came with Win 2000 Pro, but I got no disks, software,
etc for it. As I am having a problem getting the program I use for work to
operate properly and 2000 seems really slow, I was going to upgrade to XP.
Of course, I can't upgrade from 2000 to XP so I decided to format the HDD and
start fresh. Herein lies the problem:

I type format c: in CMD prompt and accept the warning. It then tells me the
volume is in use and offers to force a dismount. Again I accept the
warnings, but it tells me it cannot dismount as the volume is in use. I have
searched the knowledge base, but there was either nothing there or the steps
it told me to take were not even options I understood. (I.E. Node A; node B;
etc.) I couldn't even find the places/selections it was sending me to!!

I also tried to run checkdisk, but it got far enough to say there were
errors and indicated it could do nothing in read-only mode. While I had no
idea how to change that, I did try disk clean-up discovered it couldn't with
the sharing option, so I undid that and it is running checkdisk now.

Please help me get this thing formatted!

Thanks in advance!!

 

[Olof Lagerkvist]

Hi everybody! Hope someone can steer me in the right direction here! I have
a used DELL laptop that came with Win 2000 Pro, but I got no disks, software,
etc for it. As I am having a problem getting the program I use for work to
operate properly and 2000 seems really slow, I was going to upgrade to XP.
Of course, I can't upgrade from 2000 to XP so I decided to format the HDD and
start fresh. Herein lies the problem:

It is possible to upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP Professional
but not to Windows XP Home Editition.

Anyway, when you can start the computer on the XP installation CD you
can choose to format the drive you are installing XP on.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info, Olof! Unfortunately I was expecting to see that
message/option and choose it but never did see the option. Can you suggest
where I would find it? I only recall a setup; repair existing and quit setup.

Thanks!

 

[Olof Lagerkvist]

Thanks for the info, Olof! Unfortunately I was expecting to see that
message/option and choose it but never did see the option. Can you suggest
where I would find it? I only recall a setup; repair existing and quit setup.

There you choose to Install XP and then after the license agreement you
get a screen where you chose where to install XP. Select your C: drive.
Then you get a menu where you can select to format the drive.