Formating Win 95 PC

[oopso]

I am discarding an old PC and trying to format the partitioned C and D hardrives.  When I put in the DOS command "C: format", I get an error message : "Drive C: is currently in use by another process aborting format"  I don't know what is blocking the format, nor how to clear it.

[patio]

Travel to bootdisk.com and DLoad a Win98 bootdisk with CDRom support.
Unzip the files to a clean floppy.
Put the floppy in and re-boot.
At the A: prompt type in format C: /U and hit Enter
That should work.
Do the same for D:

p.s. Why not just pull the HDD out ? ?