Unable to format harddrive

[David Compton]

I have two harddrives on my Windows XP (home edition)
system. A Maxtor and a Western Digital. The Maxtor is
Drive C. Both show primary partitions when using Disk
Management however, the format and partiton commands for
the Maxtor are grayed out. I'm trying to rebuild it and
want to move (reinstall) windowsXP on the D drive,
reformat C and then reinstall XP on the C drive and
delete it from the D drive. Anyone have any ideas how I
can adjust the settings to allow me to reformat the C
drive?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I have two harddrives on my Windows XP (home edition)
system. A Maxtor and a Western Digital. The Maxtor is
Drive C. Both show primary partitions when using Disk
Management however, the format and partiton commands for
the Maxtor are grayed out. I'm trying to rebuild it and
want to move (reinstall) windowsXP on the D drive,
reformat C and then reinstall XP on the C drive and
delete it from the D drive. Anyone have any ideas how I
can adjust the settings to allow me to reformat the C
drive?

Logically even - you should not be able to use a tool IN windows XP to
format the drive WHERE XP is installed.

Boot with your CD. You will have the choice during the install.

Even if you install Windows XP on the "D", if it is the primary on the first
channel, it will write the boot record (most likely) to the "C" drive
(Maxtor).

My suggestion?
Move all the stuff (your docs, music, etc) to the D drive.. Boot into your
system BIOS, change to boot from CD, boot with your Windows XP CD and when
it asks you which partition to install on, delete ANY on the first hard
drive and then create a new one and finish the install.