# cannot reformat hard drive



## snafubar (Apr 22, 2002)

i have been having problems with win98 that continue despite reinstallations and have tried to reformat my c: drive so as to get a clean start... 
windows wont let me restart to dos bc of a missing file so i created a boot disk using the windows cd and start up to the dos prompt (shift f5). at both the a:> and c:> prompts i have tried typing "format" and "format c:" and nothing happens (bad cmd or file name). im not sure how to use fdisk or if doing so would help in this situation. my goal is to just be able to start from the beginning, i.e. have a drive with only dos on it so that i can start from scratch and install win98. 
(and on a side note, is the 1st or 2nd ed of windows typically more reliable?) 
thank you for any help


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## stufine (Jul 27, 2001)

You first have to make sure you have fdisk and format on your startup disk.

Then you run fdisk and partition your table the way you want it.

Then run format c: /s
to format the drive and include system files.


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## Chart16 (Aug 19, 2001)

If fdisk fails to work acquire a nother computer some how. Just temporary like an old one or at least one that runs minimum of win 95. Take your hard drive and set it to the secondary or to the slave drive and add it to the other computer as another drive and format that way. It's quite simple too much work. I've tried fdisk before when I had installed Gentus Linux on my computer. It wouldn't even let me partition the drive at all so that wasn't even an option. I would suggest trying to partition it first before doing this step.


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