Piers man Posted February 16, 2009 Report Share Posted February 16, 2009 Well now, I've been trying for some time now to format my C drive, but I have been encountering problem after problem.First off, even in an administrative account, I can't delete the partition I have on my C drive, and I can't figure out why. And every tut I've looked at says I need to remove that in order to format my disk.What makes matters worse is I tried to boot from my windows CD and delete the partition by installing a new copy of windows, but that only created another partition....leaving me with the 14 gigs of free space I had left on my HD.....AND I CAN"T get rid of that either.PLEASE ADVISE!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-pops- Posted February 16, 2009 Report Share Posted February 16, 2009 Windows is very protective about itself and will not permit you to destroy it by formatting the drive it is working from.If you are happy in losing all data from the drive you should be able to format it by ensuring that CD is the first boot device in BIOS and then rebooting with the Windows disk already installed in the computer. The machine will then see the CD before the already installed Windows version is opened and thus you will then be able to format the drive and re-install the operating system from fresh.Note that you MUST have a full version of Windows on CD to be able to do this. You cannot use recovery disks and similar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piers man Posted February 16, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2009 Windows is very protective about itself and will not permit you to destroy it by formatting the drive it is working from.If you are happy in losing all data from the drive you should be able to format it by ensuring that CD is the first boot device in BIOS and then rebooting with the Windows disk already installed in the computer. The machine will then see the CD before the already installed Windows version is opened and thus you will then be able to format the drive and re-install the operating system from fresh.Note that you MUST have a full version of Windows on CD to be able to do this. You cannot use recovery disks and similar.All right, but can you provide a bit more detailed instructions as to how I can do that. I'm not the most PC literate person.Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted February 16, 2009 Report Share Posted February 16, 2009 You should find this interesting reading :-How to set your computer to boot from the CD/DVD driveand then :-How to install Windows XP Home Editionwill take you through the process of installing XP Home or Pro Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan2273 Posted February 16, 2009 Report Share Posted February 16, 2009 Is it a laptop or a desktop computer, and do you have a full OS disk and are you using XP or Vista. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piers man Posted February 16, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2009 Is it a laptop or a desktop computer, and do you have a full OS disk and are you using XP or Vista.Desktop PC : yes : XP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Piers man Posted February 16, 2009 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2009 You should find this interesting reading :-How to set your computer to boot from the CD/DVD driveand then :-How to install Windows XP Home Editionwill take you through the process of installing XP Home or ProOhh nice, I'll give that a go :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted March 19, 2009 Report Share Posted March 19, 2009 I bought one hard drive external. while doing some operation i divide it into two partition Ntfs. now i want to restore my hard drive with one disk drive. with total size of memory.could anybody help me how should i do that please.thanks in advance.Seema simonplease reply me on [e-mail address removed]You did not post a message, but you clicked on the 'Report' button, which sent your message to all forum moderators.You should merge the two partitions back together. How did you originally separate the two partitions? Most likely the same program can do the merge as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seema Posted March 23, 2009 Report Share Posted March 23, 2009 Hi,Thanks for your reply. But the same operation could not work to merge the partition because it only divide the actuel state of hard disk.So friend if u have any other valuable help to merge these partition, please help me.Thanks.seemaI bought one hard drive external. while doing some operation i divide it into two partition Ntfs. now i want to restore my hard drive with one disk drive. with total size of memory.could anybody help me how should i do that please.thanks in advance.Seema simonplease reply me on [e-mail address removed]You did not post a message, but you clicked on the 'Report' button, which sent your message to all forum moderators.You should merge the two partitions back together. How did you originally separate the two partitions? Most likely the same program can do the merge as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seema Posted March 23, 2009 Report Share Posted March 23, 2009 Hi,Thanks for your reply. ok i will try to format but tell me please i should format disk or only one partition . As i need that disk with complete memory size in one disk drive.As your given link is removed because of the norms of forum. may be you can help me by writting some instructions.And as i remember the dos comands "Format disk a:", is that correct. ( "a" is the drive name)Thanks SeemaYou try to boot it in MS Dos and try to format... after that RUN Scandisk might help.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 I don't think you can join partitions with the DOS format command; you will need a 3rd party tool for this. Someone will recommend such a tool, hopefully free. (I use Partition Magic, which is not free.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 I don't think you can join partitions with the DOS format command; you will need a 3rd party tool for this. Someone will recommend such a tool, hopefully free. (I use Partition Magic, which is not free.)I would suggest that you try Paragon's Partition Manager 9.0 Express - which is free for non-commercial use.http://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/index.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seshomaru Samma Posted March 25, 2009 Report Share Posted March 25, 2009 or Gparted live CD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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