Reformat trouble with win 98

[spookyjester]

I was trying to reformat my mothers PC yesterday which hasnt been formated since she owned it...
Well, having a little trouble, Im not really familiar with win98 in the first place.
But I put in boot disk, started it up, boot from cd rom, I got an a promt and tried to "format c:" over and over with no luck, it did nothing at all.
I checked out some guides online and thats what it says, but it doesnt work. I cant get it to wipe out the drive.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Timmybighands]

I had trouble formatting 98 one time and I downloaded a program called data eraser. I think I got it from maxtors website. You put this program on a floppy and boot from a floppy and it would format the drive it worked pretty well. I'll see if I can find a link to it.

 

[Timmybighands]

This might work:

http://www.killdisk.com/eraser.htm

 

[jmagg]

From the A prompt, its format c: You can also start with cdrom support, when you get to a:, type the cdrom letter(probably e: since ram drive takes d: ) At e: (or whatever your drive is at that time) type setup.

 

[spookyjester]

I used that program and it was saying
error, general protection error

I dont know if there is something there preventing me from formating or not, its pissing me off though.

 

[Joemonkey]

are you getting a "file not found" for when you type format c:?

format isn't in the root of the CD drive, i believe its in the win98 folder, or a subfolder of that. switch around to the folders and do a "dir format.exe" until you find it, then type "format c:" from inside that directory

 

[jackschmittusa]

Is boot sector virus protection turned off in the bios? If you can boot from a floppy, copy the file "format.com" to it and run it from the floppy after you boot.