unable to boot from disc to format?

G

gratefully_dead

Member
Hey, Ive been trying to format my hard drive the past couple days using 64 bit vista and when i try to boot from disc to run the format itll go through the loading bars and then wont boot the vista disc menu it, just goes to a blue screen.
overall my systems been extremely laggy lately, crashing in games and even just on the desktop, my hard drives almost full (about 10gb of free space) and i was hoping for a fresh start on my computer just sort of clean up all the crap that i dont use or need anymore. do i need to erase the partitions currently on the hardrive? any help ius appreciated
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
If you are trying to format your drive to start over, have you backed up your important data? Once you format, the drive is totally erased with all your data gone. Providing you have backed up your data, all you need to do is boot to the dvd, delete existing partitions and then recreate and install.
 
porterjw

porterjw

Spaminator
Staff member
gratefully_dead said:
Hey, Ive been trying to format my hard drive the past couple days using 64 bit vista and when i try to boot from disc to run the format itll go through the loading bars and then wont boot the vista disc menu it, just goes to a blue screen.
Click to expand...

How long is the screen blue before you take action (forcing a reboot, I assume)? I had that same problem with one Vista install a few months ago. I thought I had a bad DVD, but on the third try I stepped away from the system to get a drink and got sidetracked. When I realized about 20 minutes later that I had left it, I looked back and it was loaded. Only happened with that one DVD, all others seemed to fly right through.
 
G

gratefully_dead

Member
Well lads good news and bad. Good news is i got the hard drive formatted, and reinstalled vista. Mostly anyway, this is where the bad news starts. after vista installed it restarted my computer to finish installing updates and whatnot, however when it restarted it would get to the vista loading bar and gave me a blue error message again before instantly restarting itself. Everytime I try to restart it does this. I figured maybe vista didnt reinstall properly but if I attempt to boot from the vista disc it gives me the same blue error screen after showing the loading bar. I feel like Im in a bit of a connundrum but hopefully someone on this forum will at least know what im talking about. If you need more info. let me know.
 
tremmor

tremmor

Well-Known Member
when you reinstalled did you do a quick format? ya should have done the full format. wipe it clean for all occurrences. do not use quick format.
get er done one time.

My statement is related to thinking you still have issues that was the same before you formatted after the new installation. ive seen it before if this was the case. ive gone as far as a low level format.
 
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G

gratefully_dead

Member
jevery said:
I'd try Sea Tools (DOS version). You can download an ISO image for a bootable CD that will boot to DOS, diagnose, and/or format a Seagate or Maxtor drive. I've heard that it will format other brands of drives too, but I"ve only tried it on Seagate drives myself.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools
Click to expand...

I downloaded the DOS version and extracted the files to a cd however when the boot process gets to the boot from disc stage it doesnt give me the option to press any key to boot from cd. Do i have to specifically extract the ISO file from the diagnostic folder?
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
You don't extract the iso to a cd. You use burning software to burn the iso image to a cd. Use IMGburn, its free.
 
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