I tried formatting from the prompt. It said that it couldn't run format because the drive was in use. It prompted to force a dismount. It then said that it couldn't lock the drive and it is still in use. I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to these things. I probably overlooked something simple. Any help is appreciated.
2007-05-27 14:45:48 · 8 answers · asked by batrenga 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Desktops
Your XP CD is not SP1 or SP2, hence the 127GB limit,.
2007-05-27 14:51:49 · answer #1 · answered by Cupcake 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
If a drive is in use, it is locked and can not be formatted. In this case, I'll bet you booted up from the internal hard drive. If so, then XP rightfully refused to reformat the drive it booted from. What are you thinking? Are you trying to kill your machine? Had you been successful, your machine would have stopped at some point and then failed to boot up ever again with a lot of repair work to restore the operating system. No, if you are serious, then you should be able to boot from your XP CD and then you should have the utilities available to reinstall the operating system, which may or may not include formatting the drive. The reason why it showed 128mb instead of the full capacity, is the type of formatting of the drive. The system was looking at the drive as if was FAT32 instead of NTFS. XP uses the NTFS file system, not FAT32 for drives bigger than 128gb. I know, I tried to put a 160gb drive into a win98se box, and it maxed out at 128gb. In the docs, it stated NTFS was required for drives larger than 128gb, which win98se does not use.
2007-05-27 14:58:42 · answer #2 · answered by rowlfe 7 · 2⤊ 1⤋
Replace the CD drive and boot from that. The virus cannot start when the computer is in the BIOS. So the CD drive fault is with the hardware itself, most likely an IDE cable come loose or a dead drive. RIS and using PXE booting over LAN is a absolute pain to set up but once working it makes mass-installs easy.
2016-04-01 00:00:37 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
i did that and i found out if your drive is bigger than 127 gb you need xpsp2 to be able to use the full amount, what i did was use a sp2 disc to partition and format my 250 gb drive and then changed disc and used my own disc which isnt sp2 to load the system in, i then used a disc with sp2 burned to it to update the pc and then everything was fine
2007-05-27 15:08:22 · answer #4 · answered by D McC 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
XP only recognizes a limit. I would suggest you portition the drive anyway to sections of 100 gb or so. That way you'll have an extra place to store files.
2007-05-27 15:05:10 · answer #5 · answered by computer doctor 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Here is a fix.
insert the cd that came with the hard drive, and then format with their cd to the full amount.
Then install windows but use the partition you already made using the hard drive cd software to format it.
2007-05-27 15:15:59 · answer #6 · answered by Seneca P 3 · 0⤊ 2⤋
reformat again.. try checking if your hardisk is partitioned... meaning there is drive C: and D: then delete both partitions and make just one partition.. hope this helps..
if that doesn't work go to the source i posted..
2007-05-27 14:53:38 · answer #7 · answered by aldrinsteven 2 · 0⤊ 2⤋
You have to delete all the partitions and try again.
2007-05-27 14:52:07 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋