Can I format hard drive if cd rom is not recognized?~~HELP!

Question

A virus has caused big problems on my PC (Dimensions 4600) and I need to format my hard drive but it does not recognize my 'D' or 'E' drive.  I need to use  my XP disc to reinstall. Is their a way that I can still format it? All of the directions I have read instruct you to put the installation disc in the drive. Another problem I have is that I have a little over 2 Gigs of music and pictures that I want to save but I don't know how I can save them. I even got a external zip drive and will not recognize as a plug and play. The add hardware wizard says that there was an errror and the device may not work proplerly. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.   Message Edited by bgarabedian on 11-25-2005 11:47 PM

bgarabedian · Answer

Yes, I can boot to windows. What exactly does that mean when you say are they listed in the Bios? They are not listed in 'My Computer'.

Denny Denham · Answer

bgarabedian, When you boot your system it will display 'Press F_ to enter setup.' Pressing that key will open your BIOS and you will be able to see if the drives are listed there.

Denny Denham · Answer

bgarabedian,

Yes, there is another way to format your hard disk (if you have a floppy diskette drive) but that will accomplish nothing except removing access to everything on the hard drive. You will not be able to install an operating system until you have a working optical drive. Can you presently boot to Windows? Also, are those two drives listed in your BIOS?

bgarabedian · Answer

No, I did not see them.  They were there a couple weeks ago. I was trying to figure out why my hard drive would not recognize my CD burner and I was playing around with the boot sequence and ever since then they have been gone. I thought I had done something that had disabled them but I was told that it is a virus. I work in radiology and we have a big group of computer specialists that had it for 3 days and they said it was nothing that I had done because no matter what they did they could not get it to recognize either drive. After I thought about it I realized that they were probably right. It has never been consistant reading the drive properties and my burner has only worked for me once. Anyway, I have been reading after doing a clean install but I just don't know what to do about the cd rom. If it will not read a disc then I cannot install XP or do you think once I format it and remove the virus it will recognize them again?

bgarabedian · Answer

Oh and by the way I do have a floppy disc drive and it is recognized in 'My Computer'

Windows General

Can I format hard drive if cd rom is not recognized?~~HELP!

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