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Bascialy what my problem is is that I have 2 seperate physical hard drives. One of them has multiple installs of windows on it, all xp. The problem is that hard drive is unable to be formated. It gave me an error after it went all the way through the format but I can't remember the exact wording but it had to do with being the system drive or something. Mind you I tried formatting while running windows on the OTHER hard drive. I tried doing it directly through windows and I also tried through the command prompt. Any help would be greatly appericated.

Hya Dyekidz , welcome to PCHF.

Try to format the drive with this app:

http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

so basicaly just copy to a floppy and boot from floppy?

why looking in disk managment, drive C, the one i want to format has the (System) after it. the hardive that im on right now running xp has (boot) after it. any insight as to what these mean? just looking for more info i suppose.

That would explain youre problem , you need the system partition.
Have a look here for info on that subject:

http://www.theeldergeek.com/hard_drives_01.htm


And yes ,to use that app just copy it to a floppy , boot from it and select the partition or HD to erase. But i wouldn't erase the system partition.

Hey Guys,

@DyeKids,

I think your best bet would be to reformat both harddrives and begin again. If you have multiple installs of XP on the same drive nothing is going to get better. Since you need your system partion you will need to wipe both and reinstall. I know it is a big hassle, but it will make your life simpler in the long run.

Let us know what you decide to do and we will help you through it.

TTFN

LGW

update

yeah i just ended up formatting the system partition first then installing xp again. copied my important files over to the new install and then formatted the other drive so i could start fresh. that program was nice since it had the option to use a cd instead of a floppy, since i dont have a floppy since it decided to short out and catch fire.

thanks for the help everyone.

Good to hear everything worked out for you. And you know where to find us if you run into anything else. :smiley:



Marked as Fixed.