I am having trouble reformating my hard drive in Windows. I have gone to my computer and tried to reformat the drive using the Disk management utility, and it pops up and error that says “Windows cannot format this drive. Quit any disk utilities or other programs that are using this drive, and make sure no window is displaying the contents of the drive”.
So I went snooping around and started deleting files on my own, and I have come across the reason behind my lack of the ability to format. The following files are not allowing me to delete them or reformat my drive (even in safe mode):
Flashutil9C
FlDbg9c.ocx
epilogue.ps
AcroIEhelper.dll
AcroPDF.dll
pdfshell.dll
This is on a secondary partition in which I used to have Windows installed, but I now have it installed on another partiion of my drive.
So is there a way for me to kill any and all processes that use those files, and then be able to reformat my hard drive with out using the OS boot CD?
If you really want to format your hard drive…
You can’t… at least not while you’re running Windows. You’ll have to reboot from the Windows XP installation CD, because you can’t format the drive on which Windows is running.
just go stick the xp boot disc, and when it asks to reformat the drive do that then exit the installation process, and boom blank hard drive
here’s a good source..go check it out