[loganman5000]

I have been coming here for sometime with my troubleshooting needs and used examples from others with good results so here it goes:

About 6 months back my grandmother called me with a computer related problem. Her HP Pavilion a1312n was starting to act up and I figured it was simply in need of a format using the System Restore disks that came with the computer. Much to my dismay, my grandmother who suffers from memory loss and has the habit of putting things in the oddest places informed me she did not have the software. I tore through much of the house to find it and nothing. I ended up wiping the drive and installing Windows XP Professional with Service Packs 1 & 2, thinking it would have fixed my problems. After transferring all her personal files to my external hard drive I set to work, first formatting Windows 98 Fat32 then reformatted with Windows XP NTFS. Having recently found the HP System Restore disks, she insisted on returning the computer to factory settings. When trying to boot from the disk I receive an Error stating that the disk is only usable on HP Pavilion computers and if I am using one to contact HP. I then tried to format the drive from Command Prompt, running into further problems. I now get this: 'Format cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Format may run if this volume is dismounted first. ALL OPEN HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID. Would you like to force a dismount on this voulme? <Y/N>' After yes: 'Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use.' Where can a go from here? Any help is greatly appreciated.

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Why do you want to format the drive again? It's already been formatted. You can't format a system drive from within Windows, you'll have to do it off a CD.

The HP disk is designed to look for details about the machine on the hard drive. Because you've already formatted the drive manually you've wiped out the details that the disk is looking for - in other words it no longer knows that you have a HP, plus the recovery stuff was also on the drive that you've now wiped. If you want the machine back as you originally bought it you'll have to get in contact with HP for some full recovery CDs for that particular model, if they still have any.

[Neil Jones]

Why do you want to format the drive again? It's already been formatted. You can't format a system drive from within Windows, you'll have to do it off a CD.

The HP disk is designed to look for details about the machine on the hard drive. Because you've already formatted the drive manually you've wiped out the details that the disk is looking for - in other words it no longer knows that you have a HP, plus the recovery stuff was also on the drive that you've now wiped. If you want the machine back as you originally bought it you'll have to get in contact with HP for some full recovery CDs for that particular model, if they still have any.