Reformat hard drive, not letting me.

G

Guest

I have XP pro and I'm trying to completely wipe out my hard drive. When I go
to delete my partition or reformat my drive it's not letting me in either
case. What do I do?
 
Y

Yves Leclerc

I have XP pro and I'm trying to completely wipe out my hard drive. When I go
to delete my partition or reformat my drive it's not letting me in either
case. What do I do?
Click to expand...

You can not remove the partition or reformat the hard drive where Windows XP
boots from. You must use the Windows XP install CD.
 
R

rschroe

Or use a low level utility when booted from DOS. Or a low level utitly
that has a boot disk
 
B

Bruce Chambers

Chris said:
I have XP pro and I'm trying to completely wipe out my hard drive. When I go
to delete my partition or reformat my drive it's not letting me in either
case. What do I do?
Click to expand...


It sounds like you're trying to format the drive containing the
system volume from within WinXP. You can't. This would be the computer
equivalent of sawing off the tree limb you're sitting on, and WinXP is
"too smart" to allow this.

Simply boot from the WinXP installation CD. You'll be offered the
opportunity to delete, create, and format partitions as part of the
installation process. (You may need to re-arrange the order of boot
devices in the PC's BIOS to boot from the CD.)


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrum Russell
 
W

Will Denny

You're welcome.

--


Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User
Please reply to the News Groups
 
F

Frank

Chris said:
I have XP pro and I'm trying to completely wipe out my hard drive. When I go
to delete my partition or reformat my drive it's not letting me in either
case. What do I do?
Click to expand...

Google "wipe hard drive".
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Similar Threads

Cannot reformat (wipe clean) hard drive using Win XP setup disc 16
should i reformat hard drive? 17
xp won't boot up and need to format new hard drive to start over 2
Do I want a primary or extended partition 4
Can not format second drive from XP drive 12
Will this work? ? ? 27
Using Partition Magic to change XP from NTFS to FAT32 13
External hard drive problem 4

Top