formating hard drive

[aubrey sandman]

I wish to format my hard drive which is heavily
contaminated.

I am recieving the message

"Windows cannot forward 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
the drive. Then try formatting again."

How do I overcome the refusal to obey my instruction to
format, please?

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

If you wish to reformat your hard drive (thus wiping it clean) and reinstall
Windows XP, follow this procedure:

The Windows XP CD is bootable and contains all the tools necessary
to partition and format your drive. Follow this procedure and allow
Windows XP to partition and format your drive:

1. It would be best to physically disconnect all your peripheral hardware
devices, except for you mouse and keyboard, before installing XP.

2. Open your BIOS and set your CD Drive as the first bootable device.

===> Accessing Motherboard BIOS
===> http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

3. Insert your Windows XP CD in the CD Drive and reboot your computer.
4. You'll see a message to boot to the CD....follow the instructions.
5. The setup menu will appear and you should elect to delete the existing
Windows partitions, then create a new partition, then format the primary
partition (preferably NTFS) and proceed to install Windows XP.

6. Clean Install Windows XP
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

[Courtesy of Michael Stevens, MS-MVP]

7. After Windows XP is installed, visit the Windows Update website
and download the available "Critical Updates".

8. After installing the critical updates, be sure and visit the support website
of the manufacturer of the computer to download and install any
available Windows XP compatible drivers, such as video adapter
and audio drivers.


--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


| I wish to format my hard drive which is heavily
| contaminated.
|
| I am recieving the message
|
| "Windows cannot forward 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
| the drive. Then try formatting again."
|
| How do I overcome the refusal to obey my instruction to
| format, please?

 

[serge calderara]

Close all windows explorer windows
Stop all services or backround task that might be running,
like antivirus...
If you system is connected to network be sure that no one
is mapped to your drive as a share name

And of course it should be not the system drive.

good luck

 

[Papa]

If you are trying to do the format while running Windows or from the Format
command that resides on your system hard drive, you can't. That's like a
brain surgeon doing a lobotomy on himself. He'll make progress for a while,
but then ....

Instead, boot from your OS cd disk. Then do the Format from there.