Member Avatar for DeadComputers

I need to reformat the hard drive on a computer running windows 98 se (the computer never had internet access, so none of the windows updates were installed) using the bootdisk, when I try to format drive c:, I cannot because it is compressed, so it reccomends I use the drvspace utility. However, no matter what I do neither the drvspace or the dblspace utilities are recognized (when I type dir, both show up, but when I try to use them it says bad command or filename) Then, when I try to format the host drive (h:) it starts out as if it were working, but then says I need to unmount all compressed drives. I don't know how to unmount drives without drvspace or dblspace, and I'm not even sure if I can. Does anybody know what I'm doing wrong or a way to unmount compressed drives without drvspace or dblspace?

~Kevin

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by zero deficit

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Member Avatar for caperjack

Glad to have helped ! Good luck

Member Avatar for DeadComputers

That computer was dead and with that article I finally got it back! Now my mom can do her work on her stupid PcPunch dos program so I can get service pack 2 on my gaming computer (You can't run dos programs on SP2, so my mom would lose her job if I had updated until now) You are truly a lifesaver. I feel like an idiot though, because I looked at the Windows support articles before posting this and couldn't find that article you gave me... Maybe it's just because I'm a newbie with the interface. How did you navigate to find that article? (So this way, I can find answers at support.windows.com and that means less annoying help requests from me!)

~Kevin

(Thank you so much, dude! The P.O.S. techies I called at Dell couldn't help me at all! I knew more then they did and I'm new to old computers and dos... guess Microsoft and Red Hat make it too easy for our generation, huh?)

Member Avatar for caperjack

Hi,I've had that link in my bookmarks fo a few years now ,I to have a hard time on the microsoft site ,I usuall find the articles when doing a search with Google Search .Like search "How To Fdisk" .

Member Avatar for zero deficit

If anyone is still here, I have a similar problem, I created the boot disk and everything with all the proper files, but the computers floppy drive is broken. It can write to it and everything fine, but it cannot read it. Is there any other ways to format it, or should i just throw that computer out?

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