formatting hardrive

Question

Hello,

I am trying to format my latitude CPi. I am running win 98. I have deleted the previous partition and created a new one. After that I tried to format the harddrive using the command A:\> format C:/s and it says Bad command or file name. Is this normal and what can I do to format the hardrive?

Thank you

leduke30 · Answer

You must reboot after Partitioning the drive and making the boot partition active. You cannot go directly to Format after partitioning. The command has to be perfect or DOS will reject it.         A:\>format C:/s     There must be a space between the t and C:

dseagerid · Answer

I followed the dirctions exactly as you stated and it still says 'Bad command or file name'? What next?

leduke30 · Answer

Are you leaving the Boot Disk in the drive when you reboot? The format application is on it. If you are, then try another Boot Disk, as sometimes they go bad.

dseagerid · Answer

How can I get another boot disk?

leduke30 · Answer

www.bootdisk.com    Also, I went back and looked at your first message again. It appears that you have left a space between the arrow and the 'f' in format. No space there, only between the 't' and the C:    DOS can be very picky about the commands it will accept. Message Edited by leduke30 on 02-02-2004 09:23 PM

leduke30 · Answer

If you have access to a PC running W98, you can make a Boot Disk In Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs and click the Startup Disk tab. The boot disks you have made should work, but the Floppy is not finding the necessary system files for some reason. Bad lot of Disks?? As I said I went through 4  before I got one that worked. Also, are you sure the Floppy drive is 1st in the Boot order? The harddrive in its present unformatted state would be perceived as an Invalid disk, if the boot order is set for it ahead of the floppy, or if the Floppy is defective and BIOS is not even picking up its presence. It is hard to diagnose a problem's cause this way. A final question; are you using the floppy drive in the bay or on the Cable to the Parallel port?

dseagerid · Answer

I downloaded the windows 98 bootdisk software on a brand new disk and it says 'invalid system disk'. I have repeated the whole process svereal times,  with no luck. I think I'm running out of options?

PhoneMonkey · Answer

Try this, download the file to your desktop. run it and it will make a bootable floppy disk with format and fdisk.

http://support.dell.com/filelib/Format.aspx?ReleaseID=R19775

I suggest you format the floppy disk first.

dseagerid · Answer

Thank you very much for all of your help. I was a stick in the mud without it. Now I have my latitude formated but now when I am setting up windows 98 it says

"Windows did not find any existing real-mode PC card drivers. Either you did not have any, or you have drivers that Windows couldn't detect"

What should I do now?

DELL-Cares · Answer

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Storage, Drives & Media

formatting hardrive

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