Cant format hard drive

[kwunder]

I am running WindowsME, and wish to format my hard drive to go back to Windows98. Firstly, I couldn't get the "restart in MS-Dos mode option from the shutdown screen, so had to get into dos with the help of a utilities disk. Then, when I type C:/ to get to the hard drive, and then type
format c: I get a BAD COMMAND error

How can I format my hard drive ?

 

[gunthnp]

make a system disk that is in contorl panels add remove software and statup disk. So long and thanks for all the fish.

 

[Socrates101]

If I were to do this and wanted a COMPLETE format, I would make a boot disk and then simply f disk the drive.
Then I would format the drive.

 

[DonaldLeeMcD]

Dont type "C:\" to get to drive C:. You cannot format the active drive using format.exe.
IF you want to format drive c:

1) boot from a Windows 9x startup disk, which was created from within Windows 98 by going to Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs/Startup Disk.

Then boot from that disk.

format.exe will be installed to the ram drive which the start up disk will create.

It is usually drive E:
So at the A:\ prompt, type
E:
Then type format c:

Be careful! This will remove ALL data on the hard drive. So dont use this command unless you want to get rid of your current version of Windows 9x.

Don McDaniel

 

[kwunder]

Cheers Don. Thanks for the info