Message Edited by odenwalder on 05-26-2007 07:59 PM

Thanks for the response Michael, but been there done that. Even disabled the Raid on the drive. The XP disk is read just before the area that allows you to format the drive and select the FAT type. Suddenly I get a blue screen that tells me that I cannot go any further. There is a driver called PCI.sys that seems to be the culprit that hangs things up. But to disable it would take Houdini's help. Have tried numerous NTFS programs like Norton Ghost 9 bootable and other programs on Hiren's boot CD to try to format the C: drive. Nothing addresses the drive. I plan to call Seagate on Monday to see if they can offer a suggestion. I can't stand this Vista system. I have about 7-8 applications that keep hanging up or failing to do what they were intended to do or like my Firefox browser, slows down to a crawl until I uninstall my printer software. It's a nightmare. Don't use Vista or you'll be very sorry.

Message Edited by gdwrnch3 on 05-27-2007 02:23 AM

I get to the boot menu by hitting F12. I would use another PC to format the drive if I had a PC with SATA capability. As I previously said I plan to call Seagate tomorrow to see if they have a stand alone program that can enable me to format using this computer. My problems are many. As previously said my HP software screws up my Firefox browser speed. By uninstalling the HP software the problem goes away. HP thinks that it is my incompatable router which BTW works just fine with my other XP machine on my network. My Skype program works sometimes and doesn't other times. A reboot fixes the problem for a while. My Logitech camera software (supposedly Vista compatible) appears to work ok, but I find the software at times working in the background for some unknown reason and it chews up CPU cycles and memory in the process which never stops. So I uninstalled the software and unplugged the camera. My Nero burning software works sometimes and at other times I end up burning bad dvd/cds. No solution yet. My Microsoft Mail program sometimes will not allow me to send movie files with the extension WMV. Dell was stumped on the problem. Other times I will go to a website to view a movie clip and there is no sound. Sometimes I have no sound. I have to go to the device manager and uninstall the sound drivers and reboot and allow the system to reinstall the drivers. Then the sound is ok......but for how long? The when I use the Restore feature to go back in time to get a setup that previously worked the Restore is often a bad one. Sometimes I have had to go back as far as 6 restores to get one that works. Sometimes when I go into the bios to change a setting the bios locks up and I have to reboot and try again. Dell thinks that a program or two I am using is causing the problem. But which one/s? I really don't have any more time to fool around experimenting. I have spent countless hours trying to find the problem/s to no avail. Dell can't help.

This looks like the answer to my prayers! Thanks much! Will let you know what happens. Mike

Ok JD, here's the story. I downloaded dban and used the cd/dvd ISO option and burned a boot disk. I booted from the disk and found that I had to use the "nofloppy" command in order to get the program to continue. The program does not erase my disk with or without the Raid turned on or off. I keep getting a message that it finishes with a non-fatal error which is usually caused by a disk with bad sectors. I doubt that I have a disk with bad sectors as I have used the Dell internal trouble shooting disk utilities which would have turned up a bad disk. This system amazes me with it's ability to defy one from destroying the data on the disk. If only the system worked I wouldn't have to go through with this ordeal. Any more ideas, anybody? This one's a bugger! Mike

Message Edited by gdwrnch3 on 05-27-2007 01:42 PM