Reformating.

[1slowss]

I'm trying to reformat a computer I have and reinstall windows on it but when I'm in the command promt and type in format c: it tells me Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use. Whats the deal and how do I fix that. I know some stuff just nothing to this extent. Please help. Thanks..

[jason.b.c]

I'm trying to reformat a computer I have and reinstall windows on it but when I'm in the command promt and type in format c: it tells me Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use. Whats the deal and how do I fix that. I know some stuff just nothing to this extent. Please help. Thanks..

OK , Your trying to do what now.? When you say "Command Prompt" you mean from inside the operating system.?? Right.?

Your in windows and you've opened up the command prompt and typed: format c: .?

Well i hate to tell you this , But it don't work that way..

Windows is telling you "Cannot Lock the Drive" because it can't , It's still in use..

You need to insert the windows CD in your CD drive and reboot from it and start the install , That's about it.. :D

I hope this clears up any confusions you might of had... Let us know if you need any more help with it...

[Alan2273]

Further to jasons reply you also need to make sure that your computer is set to boot of the CD/DVD drive first, this can be done by entering the BIOS and setting your CD/DVD as first boot.

[1slowss]

I'm trying to reformat a computer I have and reinstall windows on it but when I'm in the command promt and type in format c: it tells me Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use. Whats the deal and how do I fix that. I know some stuff just nothing to this extent. Please help. Thanks..

OK , Your trying to do what now.? When you say "Command Prompt" you mean from inside the operating system.?? Right.?

Your in windows and you've opened up the command prompt and typed: format c: .?

Well i hate to tell you this , But it don't work that way..

Windows is telling you "Cannot Lock the Drive" because it can't , It's still in use..

You need to insert the windows CD in your CD drive and reboot from it and start the install , That's about it.. :D

I hope this clears up any confusions you might of had... Let us know if you need any more help with it...

Well after posting this, I found a site that had a walk through of how to do it. Everything went as expected except when it all was done formating and it rebooted it say "NTLDR is Missing" so I am going to go back into the Bios and make sure it's not trying to boot up from the harddrive and it it is change it to CD-ROM because it now wont read my windows CD.

Edit- Did read what you said Alan until after I posted this, but yeah I think thats what mine is doing.

[trackrat]

I found this on Computer hope forum, it repairs the NTLDR file.

Windows XP users

Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.

When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.

Once in the Windows XP setup menu press the "R" key to repair Windows.

Log into your Windows installation by pressing the "1" key and pressing enter.

You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password.

Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk. In the below example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive letter "E". This letter may be different on your computer.

copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\

copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\

Once both of these files have been successfully copied, remove the CD from the computer and reboot.