Not able to reformat. Somebody help! 1

[JoshYates]

I tried the simple method in windows by right clicking on the my computer icon, then format. I got an error message about drive being used. I turned off my norton and it still wouldn't format.

I went into DOS. I typed in FORMAT E: and hit enter.
DOS says, "THE TYPE OF THE FILE SYSTEM IS NTFS. ENTER CURRENT VOLUME LABEL FOR DRIVE E:
I typed in the label name which happens to be YATES3 and hit enter.
DOS says, "WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK ON DRIVE E: WILL BE LOST! PROCEED WITH FORMAT (Y/N)? I typed in Y and hit enter.
DOS says, "FORMAT CANNOT RUN BECAUSE THE VOLUME IS IN USE BY ANOTHER PROCESS. FORMAT MAY RUN IF THIS VOLUME IS DISMOUNTED FIRST. ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID. WOULD YOU LIKE TO FORCE A DISMOUNT ON THIS VOLUME? (Y/N) I was unsure what exactly DOS was telling me, but I hit Y and enter.
DOS says, "CANNOT LOCK THE DRIVE. THE VOLUME IS STILL IN USE. If I hit N and enter, it'll give me the same message. I'm not able to proceed any further

Can somebody help or give some advise on how to reformat my extremly cluttered hard drive?

 

[rclarke250]

you can use a tool like partition magic, or you can download or create a windows boot disk, and do a format from there, you can not format the boot volume if it is in use,i.e. booted from it, if it is not the boot volume, make sure nothing like a swap file,or windows recovery is using it, as this will stop the format also...what version of windows are you using? And you can download a bootdisk from

http://www.bootdisk.com

 

[JoshYates]

Thanks for the helpful reply. I'm using Win2000 ver 5.0. I will goto bootdisk.com and give it a shot.

 

[davidmcolaco]

Or you can go to the administrative tools of windows and then in the computer managment area. You'll see your hard disks and then try to format the one you need.