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formatting hard drive

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
help!
i need to format my hard drive on my laptop, so i right clicked on drive C and clicked Format.
then a box came up+i clicked start. A warning box then pops up saying:
"Warning: formatting will erase ALL data on this disk.to format the disk press OK, to quit press CANCEL."
i then clicked ok+another message poped up saying:
"windows cannot format this drives. quit any disk utilities or other programmes that are using this drive, and make sure that no windows is displaying the contents of the drive. then try formatiing again"

my Q - why is this happening??? is it bcos im in 'safe mode'? can you only format a hard drive in normal mode?
thanx

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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Why do you need to format your hard drive?

    You can't format the C: drive in your case because windows is running from it, so it's in use. Safe mode won't make any difference. You'd have to format it as part of the windows installation process.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    well, ive done it before+im sure i did it this way! how do i uninstall everything then+start again from scratch? i need to format it bcos my laptop is completely fucked. its just got so many problems with it+is running slow. last time this happened, i formatted it+it worked brilliantly...until now.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    can't format with windows still running. but reboot and let the win CD boot then format from the blue screen setup.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    sugar_mouse wrote:
    well, ive done it before+im sure i did it this way!

    Bet you didn't. Billion pounds at odds of ten to one. :)

    Get your Windows installation CD, reboot, delete partitions, follow the instructions. :)
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    CTSM+sovereign: how do i do that? im really really thick wen it comes to pc, step by step would be apreciated.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    put CD in drive. shut down windows and restart. with the CD in the drive your computer should start installing a fresh copy of windows. read the instructions.

    * if cd doesn't boot you'll need to change the boot order in the bios.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Sugar, you dont post here often?

    Erm refering back to the old thread you did about this, I told you to Back up your files in safe mode because you couldnt do much in Windows running normaly because of all your start up programs....
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    sugar_mouse wrote:
    CTSM+sovereign: how do i do that? im really really thick wen it comes to pc, step by step would be apreciated.

    Get someone else to do it, because it will never go smoothly for a first-timer :).
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    On a laptop I would consider reinstalling to be an extreme last resort. I'd try a recovery disc first even. Better than faffing about trying to find the many manufacturer-specific drivers.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    TheSovereign wrote:
    can't format with windows still running. but reboot and let the win CD boot then format from the blue screen setup.

    Oh, you DO string a sensible sentence together then? :p
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Mist wrote:
    On a laptop I would consider reinstalling to be an extreme last resort. I'd try a recovery disc first even. Better than faffing about trying to find the many manufacturer-specific drivers.

    On my laptops I tend to have 2 copis of windows, just in case one goes down when I'm abroad or something, usually one with all the stuff I'll ever need and one bare minimum that's super fast.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Teagan wrote:
    Oh, you DO string a sensible sentence together then? :p

    words wont count in my world.
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