I have a Dell Dimensions 8400 with windows xp on it. I've had it for a year and its become extremly slow and I made backup disks so i want to just format it and start over. When i right clcik on my c drive and press format it comes up with this error. "Windows can not format this drive. Quit and disk utilites or other programs that are yousing this drive, and make sure that no window is displaying the contents of this drive, then try formating agian."
I have no programs or windows open so what should I try? Any easier way around this?
Just saw this in the car audio forum, I'll post the answer in case anybody else needs it.
CTRL+ F11 on the startup bar. It's called Dell PC Restore. Basically Dell has a certain section partitioned off (more likely saved to the normal C drive) with all of the necessary recovery data and o/s install.
When you start Windows, what drive do you think it loads from? The C drive right? Why the heck would you think that while running windows (off your C drive) it would allow you to format the drive your trying to run the format command from? Do you really want to format the drive, since its a Dell computer you will only be opening a can of worms (you will loose all your drivers). If you have backups, their meant to take you back in time to when you made the backup and there should be a program you loaded to make the backups in the first place. If your backup program supports it it will restart the computer and install the backup of your choice. At least this way you will not loose all your drivers.
If you would like to get your speed back without loosing your present data and programs you loaded since making the backup I would suggest you first try a few cleanup tips. Get a good cleanup utility (ccleaner) and run it to get rid of all the trash files on your PC. Get a registry cleaner (Tuneup utilities has one included) and clean the trash from your registry. And finnally when all the cleaning is done get a good defragmenter (Perfect Disk) to not only defragment the data on the drive but the system files and page file (after a reboot when prompted) and you may be suprised how much better the PC will run.
hey, i went out and got a dell dimension 9150 instead of building a pc myself again and ive never used dell things before anyways it came with windows media center 2005 and i do know when u reboot u press ctrl f11 and it restores your window but i want to format the drive and put windows xp 64-bit on since it supports x64 but everytime i reboot my pc put the cd in my cd rom it loads up to the part where it says install windows xp, repair or exit setup i click enter and i get a blue screen telling me that it dont pick up that i have a disk drive installed so it wont let me format and put windows xp 64-bit on my dell computer any ideas???
I've had the EXACT problem as the above stated post when I was trying to help someone reinstall their OS. It must be some crap by Dell that doesn't let you install unless you have their proprietary CD? I don't know, but I do know I hate Dells.
hey i actaully called them took a lil while to get it but we got it and im able to install any window i want now all we did was go into bois then from the bois menu select "drives" click enter then if u look at the bottom of "drives" u will see "SATA Operation" once there click enter again then pick "RAID AUTODETECT ATA" save it then exit n save bois changes reboot pc put ur winows cd in the dvd/cdrom boot from cd and it will work
HOLY CRAP!! I can't believe they did that! I thought the hard drive was bad when I tried it! Haha, and you also had to go through a ton of people too, didn't you? Gaah...