Boot disk - How to make - for NTSF drives?

Question

I need to know how to make a boot disk preferably floppy but cd would be fine too, for my NTSF drive, the regular windows option of formatting the floppy disk and chekcing "create ms-dos boot disk" loads but I cannot execute any commands such as "format c:" thanks

I am using XP Pro by the way.

Answer 1

you don't make different floppies for different file system. What does it say when you try to execute format c:

the command that should work is "format c: /fs:ntfs"

If you have the original cd, and you boot from that and go to repair station thing. I know format works in there.

Answer 2

That is because a "boot disk" is for STARTING the system, NOT for reformatting; which is apparently what you want to do.

What you need is a disk that will RUN the system FROM THE DISK, not just start it. (On newer systems that is invariably a "bootable" CD.)

I suggest that you be sure you have an ORIGINAL program disc, not a RESTORE disc. If you have an original disc, (USUALLY 1 or more CD's for newer systems), then set the BIOS to boot from CD instead of HD, and start from the CD. A choice should be "Command Prompt" or "Command Prompt with CD access" or something similar. I have seen SOME that upon starting will give you the opton to "Reload" or "Replace" the operating system.
NOTE: If you do not know how to reset the BIOS, I recommend that you get sombody who does to do your programing, and forget about formating the C: or any other HD yourself!! This is NOT something for the average USER to tackle! You can wind up with a NON-RUNNING system real easy.

BE SURE YOU HAVE BACKED UP EVERYTHING ON SOMETHING OTHER THAN THE C: drive. (another partition on the hard drive, CD's, etc.

If you format the C: drive, you will lose the operating system!! If that is what you want to do, once you have started the system running from the CD, you should run Directory and look for a format command. If it is NOT there, try changing to the MS-DOS directory, (there should be one), and looking again.
After you find a directory containing the command, then run the command. Format C: will reformat the C: drive, but should save a "mirror" that permits you to un-format. If you DEFINITELY want to PERMANENTLY get rid of everything, use "Format C: /u". This is an UNCONDITIONAL format that clears everything and saves nothing.

Answer 3

Problem could be some other application screwed up your hard drive. I ran into the same problem and found that Norton created a virtual partition and then crashed. Had to have someone else bail me out who knew what he was doing so I can't tell you how to fix it if that's what it is. He said any formatted system disk should work (fat32 or NTFS).