Formatting Help

chris_r · 14 Nov 2006 at 21:39

Hello,

I need to format a partition, which is my 'C' Drive

Heres the setup

200GB HDD
-------------C:/ Windows XP Pro (partition 100gb)
---------------------------------D:/WMCE (partition 100gb)

My D:/ is my default, i want to wipe the whole of C drive without having to format the whole HDD making me lose everything on both partitions. Please help

thanks

rpstewart · 14 Nov 2006 at 21:47

It should just be a case of booting into Media Centre and formatting the C: partition, either with a right click in My Computer / Explorer or in the Disk Management Tool.

chris_r · 14 Nov 2006 at 21:54

Thats what i though, the right click - format doesn't work says unable to format and theres no option to format in the management area

rpstewart · 14 Nov 2006 at 22:04

Are you using Explorer or My Computer to do the right click and format? If you do it in explorer then you need to make sure that you don't select C: then right click as this will open the tree list in the right hand pane and lock the drive. You need to have another drive selected and then just do a plain right click on C:

Just had a quick check in Disk Management there - it won't let me format either my c: or f: partitions because they contain either the system files or the swap file. I've got a nasty feeling that you're system is booting off the C: partition for both operating systems because it's the first partition on the disk. This is one of the problems with Windows, it has a nasty habit of letting you put the boot files (ntldr, boot.ini etc) on a different drive from your \windows directory.

Lord Alibaski · 15 Nov 2006 at 02:11

Just install something Like Acronis Partition Expert onto the WMCE Then delete the C: XP partition.

rpstewart · 15 Nov 2006 at 09:21

Lord Alibaski said:
Just install something Like Acronis Partition Expert onto the WMCE Then delete the C: XP partition.

If the ntldr etc are all on the c: partition then deleting it is going to make things really interesting in a nothing works kind of way.

To the OP: Can you check in Disk Management and see if it flags the c: partition as System when you've booted into WMCE

Lord Alibaski · 15 Nov 2006 at 12:06

rpstewart said:
If the ntldr etc are all on the c: partition then deleting it is going to make things really interesting in a nothing works kind of way.

Looking at what he's saying he as 2 Operating Systems installed Windows XP & Windows Media Centre Edition. So why would it install the ntldr from 1 Operating System onto another partition which as another Operating System installed on it?

rpstewart · 15 Nov 2006 at 13:11

Dual booting is done after the BIOS boot phase, the BIOS will boot to the active partition (probably the c: in this case) at which point the OS load starts. NTLDR kicks in and looks at the boot.ini, the user selection from which determines which partition & path is used to load the operating system.

Now if you wipe the C: partition in this case the system will still try to boot from it but will generate an error due to there being no boot files on the c: partition. To get round this the d: in the above example needs to be set as the active partition and all the boot files put in the right place - this may well need to be done from the XP recovery console.