Wanting to know if I can solve this through DOS

[kcgoes]

My system will not boot up even with the recovery CD because somehow the C drive has been erased. Is there anyway to ressurect it with DOS commands?? All that can be accessed is A:\:> or  X:\>  - I don't care about losing data, I just want to be able to reformat the C Drive. Let know if there is any hope....

[GX1_Man]

Somehow the C drive got erased?  

If that is so, then you need to insert your legal Windows CD and restart the machine and reinstall it. What version of Windows was this? How do think it got erased? How are you getting to an A:> ? What floppy or CD is in the drive?

[kcgoes]

Don't want to go into how it happened here. Suffice it to say that I've tried what you suggest with a work copy of XP just to see if that would reformat it, then I would go back to the Recovery CD's that came with my computer and reformat from there (the legal way). Even trying it this way it only goes up to a point , but when it tries to load windows the error message comes up that the hard drives are missing. Do I have to get a new hard drive to solve this? There were no windows disk that came with the computer (it is a Sony Vaio) that had Windows ME (I know, I know I know)... Just need some practical advice on whether I should just give up and buy a new hard drive, new computer, etc....

[patio]

Check the physical connections on that HDD and or put it in another machine to see if it is recognised...
It sounds like it was only partially formatted and therefore Windows can't see it...

Another option would be to travel to bootdisk.com and grab a WinME bootdisk and use the file on a working machine to creat a bootdisk.
Then boot your machine with the newly created bootdisk and at the A: prompt type fdisk and hit enter.

If this doesn't show the drive it has probably died an early death. If it does pick it up use fdisk to partition that drive as active and when it's finished at the A: prompt type "format C: /u" without the quotes and hit Enter...this will prepare the HDD for a clean install.

[kcgoes]

Thank you so much!!