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Cannot Run Fdisk?

I have windows Me in my system. Basically I am trying to erase my hard drive but I cannot use the fdisk command.. Whenever I run it and I get to the screen that gives me the warning you are about to delete your drive, I hit enter and get a message saying that the disk cannot be locked. Anyone know what in the world is going on. I'm assuming that there is still a program writing to the drive. :cry:

sidoe
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61 posts since May 2004
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if you want to erase your hard drive its format C: fdisk is for management of partitions i believe.

Killer_Typo
Master Poster
781 posts since Apr 2004
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if you want to erase your hard drive its format C: fdisk is for management of partitions i believe.


True, fdisk is for managing your HDDs partitions. A quick format should wipe out your HDD, but then again, I don't think you can do it from within windows if the drive you're formatting is the drive where windows is installed.
What you can do is this:

1. Get a win98 bootdisk. (I always have one on the ready.)
2. Boot from the diskette then run fdisk or format from there.

and btw, on a personal note, trash winME and get a real OS... :mrgreen: winME gives you nothing but headaches...

oalee
cyberkill(ed)
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533 posts since Feb 2004
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Fdisk is a good way to wipe the hard drive. Remove the existing partition, create a new one in its place, and then format. That's the procedure I personally always adopted when using Win 9x versions.

But whether its Fdisk or Format that is to be used to clean the system drive, either tool must be run either from a Windows boot diskette or from the Windows CD itself. Neither method will work if you try to run them from within Windows, or even from the 'Reboot into DOS mode' function of Windows 95 or 98

Catweazle
Grandad
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4,335 posts since Mar 2004
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and btw, on a personal note, trash winME and get a real OS... :mrgreen: winME gives you nothing but headaches...


i happen to like win ME :P, never had any problems with it!!!! though i must say i liked Windows 2k the most. (over all the OS's ive used 2k was my fav, then XP, then ME, LinuxFedora, 98,95)

Killer_Typo
Master Poster
781 posts since Apr 2004
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Fdisk is a good way to wipe the hard drive. Remove the existing partition, create a new one in its place, and then format. That's the procedure I personally always adopted when using Win 9x versions. But whether its Fdisk or Format that is to be used to clean the system drive, either tool must be run either from a Windows boot diskette or from the Windows CD itself. Neither method will work if you try to run them from within Windows, or even from the 'Reboot into DOS mode' function of Windows 95 or 98


True to every word... but remember, he's using WinME, and winME doesn't have the option to boot into MS-DOS. well, not unless you do some tweaking... but I don't think that would be necessary... a win98 bootdisk should do the trick...

oalee
cyberkill(ed)
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533 posts since Feb 2004
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Guys thanks for all your help.. Win 98 boot disk did in fact do the trick.. :cheesy:

sidoe
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61 posts since May 2004
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This question has already been solved

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