[Seltox]

I just recieved a laptop that had 3 partitions on it. All 3 were FAT32. the C: had Windows 98SE on it, but the other two drives had nothing at all on them. I popped in my XP professional install disk and installed Windows XP Professional (this went onto the D:). When I installed it I chose new isntallation, rather than upgrade, as upgrading would leave the partition as FAT32.

Anyway, after I installed, the D: (where XP was) was NTFS. I then formatted the E: (blank) to NTFS also. Then I tried to format the C: (Where 98SE still was). No luck. Windows said it couldn't do it (after I'd waited the whole time for it to actually happen). So I went into th C: and deleted all the files, set hidden files to be viewed, and there weren't any. I tried to format it to NTFS again. Same thing. I opened command prompt, and accessed the C: that way. I typed dir and found there were 2 files there, so I deleted them. When I tried to format, I got the exact same message.

When I checked the properties of the C: there was 335mb used. So I tried disk cleanup, and removed like 50mb of that from the recycle bin?
Still no format.
I've even tried formatting through command prompt. It says it can't unless I dismount the drive, so I dismount it, and then it goes ahead with the 'format'. But it doesn't actually do anything.

This partition is only about 3gb in side, so I can live without it, it's just annoying because on startup it asks if I want to start 'Microsoft Windows XP Professional' or 'Microsoft Windows'.

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Windows does not allow formatting itself. What I see, however, is that you wish to have a computer with only xp on it, formatted to ntfs on all partiions. Why not backup the data and reinstall xp in the process, deleting old partitions and creating new ones to your liking?

If you want to leave the thierd partition intact (FAT32) do the above mentioned installation only with the two other partitions.

[The Skeptic]

Windows does not allow formatting itself. What I see, however, is that you wish to have a computer with only xp on it, formatted to ntfs on all partiions. Why not backup the data and reinstall xp in the process, deleting old partitions and creating new ones to your liking?

If you want to leave the thierd partition intact (FAT32) do the above mentioned installation only with the two other partitions.

[Ztruker]

Seltox, in case you're wondering, when you installed XP to D:, it placed 3 critical files on the C: Win98 partition:

ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini

If you were successful in formatting C: then you would no longer be able to boot XP on D: as the above 3 files are critical to the boot process.

[Seltox]

Ah, okay. I ended up just remaking the partitions and installing XP.