Reformat trouble

Started a thread and not sure what happened to it so here goes again. I am needing to reformat my HD and am unable. When going into command prompt in xp everything seems fine then it states the volume is still in use. When trying to dismount it doesn't work and states processes still in use. I have tried singly stopping different processes, but to no avail. There are no programs running in the background. I have done reformats many times and have never encountered a problem like this. Any thoughts or suggestions. Thanks.

Are you trying to format the drive with Windows on it? Or a seperate storage drive?

Well it has been a long while since I have done it and kinda forgot about running format with the cd. Which I will try, I just don't know if I can run 2 partitions through the cd. Will see.

If you're doing a clean install you can make 2 partitions

It sounds like you must be formatting the partition that has Windows installed on it, otherwise you wouldn't be having problems.

The easiest way to format the partition you have Windows on is to insert your original XP CD and boot from it to enter Windows setup. When you get to the part of Windows setup where it asks you which partition to install onto, delete whatever it has. Setup will then automatically partition the free space and then format it for you.

This sounds more confusing than it is - boot from Windows setup CD, when it comes to choosing a drive, you should get asked to format. I hope this helps.

:)

Damn thing won't let me boot from a CD either. I made a boot cd which it will not start up to. It shows it as not reading it as a disk, like it's blank. But appears to have everything needed on it when looking at it on my laptop. Also trying to boot from the actual xp disk, won't work either. Go into the set up menu and when clicking on the install windows link it just sits there and does nothing as if saying kiss my ass. It's really starting to piss me off. I have never had a problem reformating before, WTF!!!

What do you mean _clicking_ on the install link? At that stage of the Windows setup, mouse driver's aren't loaded!

I strongly suspect you are running the XP CD from within Windows (ie. after it is booted). You need to boot directly from the CD instead, then follow my above instructions. To boot from the CD, you will need to change the Boot Order in your BIOS. To do this, press Del (or whatever) to enter Setup just after you turn your computer on and you're looking for something like:

Boot Priority or Boot Order or similar. Your hard drive will probably be at the top, followed by your CDROM, floppy etc. You need to change it so your CDROM is at the top or first boot device, then whatever else.

Save your settings, whack your CD in the drive and it should say Press any key to boot from CD.