I created a new partition on my HD running XP. I formatted it in FAT32.
I want to reformat it back to FAT or FAT16. When I use the disk manager
to format, it goes through the motions and I end up back with FAT32.
I think I saw someone who had a software item that would let you format
regardless of the existing format. I can't remember where I saw that.
Anybody got any ideas?

Why do you want to go back to FAT16? There's really no good reason to do that. FAT 16 can only support a partition size of 2GB or under.

Do you mean converting from NTFS to FAT32, perhaps? This is not possible, at least according to Microsoft. The only conversion you can do is from FAT32 to NTFS, but not back.

There are third party partitioning tools such as PartitionMagic, PartitionIT, etc that can convert partitions between the various formats. Perhaps one of these can do what you want.

To be able to convert to FAT16 the partition must be 2Gb or smaller (although Windows NT and presumably 2000 and XP as well, can handle 4Gb FAT16 partitions). FAT16 is very inefficient once you go over 512Mb, the best option for larger partitions is NTFS.

Thanks guys for the input. I got it this afternoon. I did it by deleting the partition I had made in 32, then making a new partition with just FAT.

XP does'nt see FAT 16 it can only go with either Fat 32 or NTFS.
And the software you might be thinking of "Partition Magic"

Try using Partition Magic. It has the ability to change the FAT32 partiotion to a FAT partition. Remember to backup the data before attempting any such stunts

Windows XP may not be able to install on FAT16, but it can read it fine:

http://theelectricuniverse.com/proof.jpg

I'm triple-booting DOS, Windows XP, and Linux. Linux doesn't show in the screenshot because XP can't read Linux's FS, but the FAT16 DOS partition shows fine. I've edited DOS's autoexec.bat in XP with no problems. Accessing the FAT16 partition is also how I got my downloaded DOS games into DOS. My point is, FAT16 is perfectly readable in Windows XP.

Why in gods name do you want FAT16 O.o

The reason I wanted a dos partition is to run dos programs there. I never succeeded in getting to where I wanted to be and gave up. I could get dos on a third partition but my old dos on a floppy would not see the HD no matter what I did. The Microsoft version of dos ran fine but my old version of dos could not see a C: drive even if I made it the prime partition using Fdisk. I thought partition size might be the problem but no matter how small I made it, my dos would not recognise the drive. My dos, I think it was ver 6.2.

I need a USB to run off FAT instaed of FAT32 because my laptop doesnt seem to support FAT32. Anyone got any ideas on how to do it?

Thanks so much

Amy