formatting hard drive

[gstubbs]

I recently built a new system using my old hard drive. My operating system does not boot up(everything else does). A drive overlay on my hard drive might be causing this problem but regardless Ive decided to just wipe out everything on the hard drive and start fresh. Using a startup disk to get to DOS I try to use the format C: command and am returned, "format not supported on drive c:". Any suggestions?

[Garry Harrop]

Which startup disk do you use. if you are using the win98 start up and you have fdisked your system on rebooting your system, choose start with cd support or windows setup and you should be prompted as to whether the drive should be formatted. win98 boot disk wont support a format directly as far as i know. Alternatively, have you tried a win95 boot disk for the DOS.

[Paleo Pete]

1. A win98 start up disk should allow formatting the drive, the disk creates a ramdrive with the utilities necessary loaded into it. The only reason you would get the "format not supported" message would be if the disk is not partitoned, then you would need to run fdisk.

2. If you're using a drive overlay, watch the boot screens carefully, you may have to use the start up disk differently, often the overlay requires that you press the spacebar at a certain time, then insert the boot disk.

Hard Disk Partitioning and Formatting Procedure (http://www.pcguide.com/proc/setup/hdd-c.html) might help.

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