cant format hard drive

[xLuCyx]

Im trying to format my hard drive. Atm im using windows XP and its full of crap and i need to clean it by formating it but on the old computer i formated like this :
1.restarted computer and went to BIOS and changed the boot mode to boot from CD
2.waited for the blue screen to load->pressed F8->deleted all the partitions and installed new ones and then installed windows XP (all that using a windows XP cd)

But now with the new PC which is also running on XP cant format it. When i go to the blue screen there are no partitions to delete. There are only "Unknown devices" or something. When i try to install a new one then comes the blue error screen and computer restarts. When i try to use the command format c:
it says that "cant format removable media"
what should i do?

[Computer Hope Admin]

It's really strange that the other Windows XP would be unable to format it. I would guess that it has something to do with file protection / encryption. My suggestion would be to use a bootable diskette with fdisk and/or debug and try deleting the partitions using fdisk. This will take a little work but unless the drive is bad it would definitely be able to delete all partitions and allow you to recreate the portions using the Windows XP CD.

Information about creating a bootable diskette can be found at:
http://www.computerhope.com/boot.htm

Or if you don't have the means of creating a bootable diskette you can download from:
http://www.bootdisk.com/

You'll boot from the diskette and use fdisk to manually delete the partitions. Additional information about fdisk can be found at:
http://www.computerhope.com/fdiskhlp.htm

Or if you don't want to go that route you can run a debug routine to completely wipe the drive. That routine and information about debug can be found at:
http://www.computerhope.com/rdebug.htm

[xLuCyx]

fdisk doesnt work for me cause it doesnt recognize NTFS and sadly my current hard drive is NTFS.
Plus my computer doesnt have a floppy drive  :-/

[Computer Hope Admin]

Should show the drive as a MS-DOS partition and you should be able to delete the non dos partition.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000226.htm

However, since you don't have a floppy, hope you have a CD burner or USB flash drive. If so I'd suggest using the ultimatebootcd, which does contain HDD wiping tools among other various other useful tools. It can be found on the below link.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

[dl65]

 LuCy.....  I think this may assist you .
set the bios to cd-rom first boot...... save the change and exit.
Put your win xp cd in the cd-rom.
Shutdown the machine .
Now restart and it should now start to load ..... Follow the instructions ...... *** Don't choose the quick format****

Good luck and let us know how you make out.

dl65