So I decided to put Vista Ultimate onto another harddrive, and then just format the original drive turning that into my slave drive but when I try to delete or format files off of that hard drive it says:


When formatting by right click> format -
"Windows was unable to complete the format:

When I select all files and right click> delete, it
says that I don't have permission too, or keeps
asking me to try again (this does nothing and just repeats)


Please help me, it's so frustrating since it's holding me back from finishing up my PC.
If you need any information just ask.


Thanks,
Bevan

This post has been edited by 3litre: May 24 2008, 03:56 AM

Probably the easist method is to use Darik's Boot and Nuke program. Please read everything you can at the website because you can mess things up if you do it wrong. I say this because i told a customer about this software and he proceded to nuke his operating system on his computer. He forgot to specify the 2nd hard drive so B&N nuked his "C" drive.

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

I runs off a bootable CD so you really don't even need windows working for this.

SRX660

Hello 3litre...

Tell us a little more about your machine's configuration. Are you trying to format the system drive (C:) from within Windows?

When you install an operating system, the first sector of the system drive is used for boot instructions. If you install the operating system to a second drive while leaving the original system drive connected, the boot instructions will still be written to the C: drive even though the operating system is on the D: drive. Windows will not allow you to format the system drive from within Windows if the boot instructions are present.

If you use third party software to accomplish the format of C:, you will likely lose the boot instructions and the machine may not boot to the operating system installed on the D: drive. Even trying to format using the Windows installation CD will result in a no boot situation if your machine is configured the way I suspect it is.

The best way to accomplish what you want is to remove the system drive (the one you want to format) completely, set up your new drive as the Primary Master drive, and do a fresh install Windows on that. Then you can connect the old drive as a slave and format it from within Windows as it will no longer contain the boot instructions that are in use.

Let us know how you now have the drives set up on your machine.

wannabe1

I found out on my own, but your way would work and would probably be a lot quicker but I get impatient haha.

I used Killdisk to delete everything off of C drive and then reinstalled windows onto D drive. Then though what the [bleep] am I doing (wanted a two OS system but then got over that) and installed vista onto C drive, used killdisk on D drive, then reinstalled OS on C drive.

Gah!

Lots of time wasted

At least now if people stuff that up they know what to do.


Thanks a lot people will bookmark this for future reference.

Ended up getting it fixed (the long way, read in post above).

But agreed read the instructions I almost wiped the OS in Killdisk because I forgot to change the drives around.