Urgent- formatting

[reubenb]

im in a real mess. i want to format my drive C. on winxp you can do this with going into dos and going format c: whatatever.. but u cant do it while windows is running. so i got a winxp msdos startupdisk and then it says A:/> so i type C:/ or C or C: and it sais invalid drive specifician . how do i format it delete the entire information on the hardrive everything!!!

this is sorta urgent so please help me asapp

[suriya6in]

Remove your cpu cabin and see whether it has any loose contacts between harddisk and motherboard connectors.
also check whether motherboard has detected the harddisk through the setup screen!!

[reubenb]

ah no...
it says invalid for everything but A:
how can i format it another way?

[mouse]

format c: at the prompt...

...you don't want to change the prompt to c:\ because c: can't format itself. Essentially a: is formatting c:.

[cg9com]

be careful and make sure you get every direction for every step of the way, because reformatting is not just as easy as typing format C:
granted its not hard, ive done it plenty of times, but i wouldnt want to be stuck in DOS mode after deleting a partition or something ....

[Roy Sinclair]

You understand that formatting C: will render your system unbootable right? Unless you installed your OS to some other drive it will also remove your OS.

If that's your objective then boot from the XP installation CD and use the options in the install process to reformat that drive and then simply abort the installation after the format is finished. If you are wanting to wipe out the existing in order to reload then you can simply let the installation continue.

[Roelf]

did you set the filesystem for drive c: to ntfs? thats why you cannot access it when booting from a:

[reubenb]

oh jees
thats why//// i set it to ntfs ah grrr!!!
thanks to all your help!!!