Formatting Slave Drive with XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter RHN
  • Start date Start date
R

RHN

I had XP installed on my 8 GBPrimary drive. I installed
a 120GB as the Primray drive, and made the 8GB drive the
slave. I now want to format the 8GB slave drive but when
I right click on the slave drive in My Computer to run
the format command, I get a 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 the drive. Then try formatting again."

I am running Norton SystemWorks. When I hit Alt/Ctrl/Del
there are no utilities running, but I don't know whether
any are running in the background. How can I find out if
they are running, and, if so, how do I quit them?

I will appreciate any help you can give me. Thanks! RHN
 
Since XP is installed on that drive, XP cannot format it while XP is booted.
You need to do the following:
Boot with the XP CD in the drive. When you see the message on the boot
screen to "Press any key in order to boot from the CD," do so.

After loading drivers and files, you should be taken to a screen with
the following:

To Setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.
To Repair a Windows XP Installation using Recovery Console press R.
To Quit setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.

In your case, press ENTER.

Agree to the License agreement by pressing F8.

You will then be taken to a screen with two options.

To repair the selected Windows XP installation press R.
To continue installing a fresh copy of Windows XP without repairing,
press ESC.

This will bring you to a partition map where you
can delete, create and format partitions.
Select the drive you wish to format, delete the partition, then create a new
partition, format as desired and continue with XP installation on whatever
drive on which you wish to install it.
 
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