formatting help with hd

empty

ok i just got a new hd so i am going to use my old one as backup but it wont format, ive tried doing it through cmd prompt no go, ive tried doing it with the right click and format no go, when i make a boot disk and go to startup it said that i am missing hal.32 file. So it cant startup with the bootdisk. Any help would be really appreciated. This new sata hd is great though.

Tex

You don't mention what happens when you try to format.

If you installed the new sata drive and booted from the xp cd for example and reinstalled...

Then the boot files are still on the old HD. There is a ton of possibilitys as to WHY it isnt allowing you to format but you gave almost no info here.

What OS? How did you install the new HD?

Try unpluging the old one. Can you still boot into windows on the sata drive? If not ... thats your problem.

In XP to format you right click on my computer. Select manage. Then disk management. From there you can delete partitons, make new ones and format etc...

Unless (as I suspect) its still the active boot partition.

Tex

empty

I am on windows xp pro, I installed the new sata hd into the sata connector on the motherboard, when i try to format the old ide it gets to 99% and said that it cant. I will try to unplug it and try to boot.

empty

yeah when i try to boot without the old hd it said that i was missing ntldr press ctrl alt delete to restart.

Tex

Unless you unplug the original drive it keeps the bootfiles (ntldr, boot.ini etc...) on the old drive.

But I would of thought it would of blocked ya from formating it at all since its still the system partition.

First lets fix your boot problem. unplug the ide and boot from the XP cd. Go into recovery console.

type fixmbr
fixboot

then run bootcfg (pretty sure thats it) and run it first with the bootcfg ? option to get the available switchs. I think its /r. You want it to search the drives and rebuild a new boot.ini

Tex