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OK I am frustrated beyonf belief. I am using PC from school to send this message cuz my PC home isn't working!!! LONG POST!

GOAL: to reformat Drive C: and install XP HOME

1. I decided to reformat my C: drive (80gig) so I unplugged my D: drive (120gig) incase I accidentaly formatted my D: drive (which has personal files on it).
-Once I unplugged my D: drive (IDE cable, power) I boot up PC and windows doesnt load. It stops at the DOS screen where it shows my primary drive, secondary drive, slave, etc... and does stays at that screen.
-My jumpers were set as following BEFORE I unplugged the D: drive. C: (had no jumpers), D: (jumper set to slave). BOTH physical HARD DRIVES were on the same IDE cable which connects to the MOTHERBOARD.
-I plugged the D: drive back in and it still stops at that same DOS screen. I played with the jumpers on the HD's a 100 times to no avail! WINDOWS DOES NOT LOAD!

2. I decided even with above issue to try and reformat the C: drive using the RECOVERY CONSOLE from the XP CD. I followed instructions from (http://www.cyberwalker.net/faqs/reinstall-reformat-winxp/index.html) and got PC to boot from XP CD and did the following (from cyberwalker.net):

"Next, type: map and hit the ENTER key.

Next, type: format C: /fs:ntfs"

After attempting the above step it says "the parameter is not valid" and i get stuck from here....

Q1: Why did XP not load after I unplugged D: drive? MY OS is on C: drive.

Q2: Why did XP still not load after I plugged back in my D: drive leaving the PC the same way it was before I unplugged my drive?

Q3: Why does it give me the parameters error when Im trying to reformat the C: drive?

PLEASE PROVIDE SUGGESTIONS AND THANK YOU TO ANYONE THAT CAN HELP!

Those are legitimate commands although they are a bit convoluted and not the way to go that I would advise.
Are any drives shown in the bios now at all as you may have partially dislodged the IDE when disconnecting the hdd's?

IDE appear to be intact, the PC does recognize the HARD DRIVES in the BIOS. Here is an update:

Next, type: format C: /fs:ntfs"
did the part above and worked, had a spelling mistake at 1st.. now on to bigger issue.

The format worked fine and PC rebooted. Then I pushed ENTER to install WINXP. It gave me option of partition and I just selected the C: drive. It told me to reformate it in NTFS (not the quick mode) which I did (again!) and then Windows said "starting to load files". THEN during the file loading it said "the file cmdide.sys is corrupt. Press any key to contiue". I do and it says installion failed thus i rebooted and started whole process again.

Eventually I get back to installation and that error doesn't come up BUT as it srats copying files and the percentage bar starts it says "Setup cannot copy the file: modem.sys" i pressed eneter a few times to try copying file again and it finally accepted it. It did that 2 more time for the files "ega80woa.fon" and "cyycoins.chm" but it finally accpeted them and then when percentage bar reached 80% I looked away from PC and looked back to see it reboot (dont know if it reached 100%). Then the whole setup process starts up again!

I tried for a 3rd time and tried deleting the partition instead of just installing XP on it. I did that and then it said C: Partitioned [raw data] 76,xxx mb free. I choose it to install winXP and then a blue window loaded and said:
STOP: c0000145{Application Error}. The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000006). Click OK to terminate the application.
there is no OK to click on, PC froze, so I just shut down.

I AM STUCK AND HAVE NO IDEA WHATS GOING ON OR WHAT TO DO. I GUESS THIS STARTED WHEN I DECIDED TO UNPLUD THE D: DRIVE...

To me either your copy of XP is scratched or ............., or your cdrom is not reading correctly.
Do you know how to Fdisk?
In fact forget that and download Killdisk, set the boot sequence to floppy first, totally wipe the drive with killdisk then set the bios to boot from cdrom and insert the XP disk and go from there.

Killdisk didn't work, I used a different XPcd. Pc was running like brand new last nite, it worked.REbooted a few times and installed software, and pc was still working.
Today i boot up and it says, "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press ENTER".
Changed boot sequence in bios, still did not work.
Then set bios to default, rebooted and following msg apperaed "update ESCD successfully".Same msg appeared last nite but XP loaded normally.

Thanks for the help thus far.

What do you want us to suggest Marco?
On one hand you say all is ok then you say it's not.
To me your hard drive is shafted and that initial disk you used didn't help.
Why didn't Killdisk work?