[geeordie76]

Hi there, in desperate need of help!! want to format a hard drive and reinstall windows, but when i try the message:

"setup was unable to format drive c. The hard disk may be damaged. make sure the disk is on and properly connected. If the disk is a SCSI disk, make sure your SCSI devices are properly terminated"


Any idea how i go about it? I have even tried doing it in the recovery console by typing:
"format c: /fs:ntfs" which seemed to have worked, till i go reboot & reintall windows, then the same happens all over again!!

The computer is about 2 & a half yrs old, its a packard bell, & the hard drive is a maxtor 80g.

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windows can't recognize it. I had the same problem. Once this happens you are screwed in my opinion if someone else has a suggestion then i also need to hear it i have a western digital 40gb drive.

[hudihoo]

windows can't recognize it. I had the same problem. Once this happens you are screwed in my opinion if someone else has a suggestion then i also need to hear it i have a western digital 40gb drive.

[Samm]

What drive are you booting from & are you running the format command from the boot device? (ie XP CD or win98 floppy etc?)

[geeordie76]

booting from cd drive, win xp cd

[austin_o]

did you check the bios and doe it see the hd? When you boot to the windows cd, you tried to format and got the error? Do you have a Win98 boot cd you can try? You can get one at http://www.bootdisk.com/

If that works, then repeat the process booting from the windows install cd. If not, I suspect your hd is dead.

[geeordie76]

Yeah checked bios, seems to be ok. tried win98 too, no good.
Think hd is goosed, has to be!?
Thank for your help guys!

[Samm]

Check in the bios for any sort of boot sector / virus protection & disable it. I'm not very familiar with Packard Bells, but it's possible theres about them thats preventing you from formatting & only allows the Packard Bell restore CD to used for this purpose - but I am guessing completely.

Another possible cause, is a damaged MBR or track 0. You may be able to fix the drive if you slaved it from another computer & access it that way. Alternatively, if you do buy another drive, remove the current one but add it back in as a slave after Windows is installed, unless the drive is completely dead or making funny noises, the chances are it will be recoverable.

[boofman]

so what was the outcome? I am having the same problem with ST200GB ATA 100 drive. Seagate tech support told me it is a bad drive, so I returned it for a new one and the SAME THING!

[Samm]

boofman
The problem were are getting is probably due to the fact that XP won't recognise anything over 137GB. There are ways round this course but I suggest you start a new thread for your particular problem & then we can take it from there.

[hudihoo]

well as i said i had the same problem with xp and a 40 gig. I used a 10 gig for a while but today i got it to work when installing windows ME. It takes a while to format in ME, install ME and then reformat with the XP disc and then installing XP. just got done now and i started at noon.