anybody know how to format a laptop c drive when...
 

i go into command prompt this is what i do and what i get...

C:\Documents and Settings\KingHustler>FORMAT C:
the type of the file system is NTFS.

WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVEABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format (Y/N) Y
Verifying 38146M

Format cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Format may run if this volume is dismounted first.
ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID.
Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (Y/N) Y
Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use.

C:\Documents and Settings\KingHustler>FORMAT C:

how can i get around this and erase the whole c drive?

please help

Sounds like something's corrupted. Run a scan disk and see what bad sectors it finds and let it fix them if possible.

Try booting to the command prompt, or from floppy or cd before running format

its a laptop and it doesn't have a floppy drive...

Create a bootable CD-rom and put fdisk on it. Boot from your cd rom and run FDisk in dos.

The windows XP cd is bootable, just boot on CD and format during installation ;)

fdisk, then format

ya that will work too just boot off your xp cd and before install it will format it out

looks like you are trying to format while running windows.. is this correct?

if yes, you have to boot into dos and do it from there

You can't format your C drive if you're running a command prompt from windows

how can i boot into dos?

I just told you how to; read.

If it's winxp then there is no more DOS. those days are gone.

You gotta get winxp cd. Insert it into cd rom and restart. If it does not promt you to boot from cd, then you need to get into bios and make your cd rom a priority bootable device. then restart again, finally boot from cd. on the cd go to "command prompt" section. Now you can run format commands and such...

If you want to just have a clean reinstall of windows, then you can go into installation mode right away, and it will offer you to format your drive before installing windows.

Good luck.

or.... google for aefdisk.exe, drop to floppy, boot from floppy, run aefdisk