Dear Member of the forum;
Here is my problem: I have been trying for the last week to re-partition my hard drive and to format it. Before doing, I have backed-up all my files. As a reminder, I have a Toshiba laptop with a Pentium 4 processor, 38.4GB.
I have also created a DOS start-up disk.
After partitioning the drive using fdisk command, my problem is that I can't format the new partions, either by booting from the CD or from the floppy disk with the "format c:/s or format c: or format whatever: " command.
I haven't got the windows xp start-up disk, wich I know, is very important; each time I type format .... I receive "bad command" message. I have set active the primary partition but this still doesn't sort the problem out.
Is there any way of formating the drives without erasing the new partition?

you already erase your partition the best way to do to have a bootable windows xp cd and change the boot setup from your bios setup, make it the cd rom to boot 1st. then when the windows xp bootable cd run just follow the instruction. you can format or re pRTition your harddrive there to install your new OS. hope this would help you.

and if that didn't work ,go to www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm and get win98 bootdisk or winxp bootdisk ,sounds to me like there is no format command on the disk you created .

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