I need help formatting my hdd

[fackerr]

I went into command prompt and said 'format c:'. It asked if I'm sure i want to format and I said yes. Then it said..
'Format cannot fun because the volume is in use by another process. Format may run if this volume is dismounted first. ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID. Would you like to force a dimount on this volume? (Y/N)'
So i said 'yes' and it replied with..
'Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use.'

Can somebody please help me with this?

 

[Praetor]

You cant format the C: while it's in use, to format the C drive you'll have to do so from boottime either by using a 3rd party program like Partition Magic (which will require you to reboot) or you can boot off a floppy.

 

[fackerr]

is there anyway to boot off of the xp cd? because i don't have a floppy drive on my laptop that i want to reformat

 

[Praetor]

is there anyway to boot off of the xp cd? because I don't have a floppy drive on my laptop that I want to reformat

The WXP cd is bootable (actually that's the ideal way of (re)installing WXP). Just goto your BIOS and change your boot order so that the optical drives are checked before the HDD and you're set to go

 

[fackerr]

i'll try that
thanks

 

[Praetor]

Glad I could help

 

[fackerr]

It worked off the XP disk!
thanks a bunch

 

[Praetor]

Glad I could help