Laptop will not format and reinstall xp.

[LeStEr]

My friends laptop had some viruses and it came to the point where it would not boot into xp. He asked me to come over and format it and reinstall xp so I tried to do that and got this error.

Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged.
Make sure the drive is switched on and properly connected to your computer.

Is the HD toast or is there something else I can try?

 

[phatrabt]

You could make a bootdisk with checkdisk on it to see if there's errors on the disk. The other thing I can tell you is to find out who makes the drive and get the manufacturer's diagnostic disk for it and run that.

 

[birdpup]

Yes, figure out who the hard drive manufacturer is and then check the support of driver download section of this company's website for a diagnostic utility that can test the drive for you. This diagnostic utility may then have an option to write zeros to the hard drive. Write zeros to at least the first and last parts of the hard drive with either the manufacturer's diagnostic utility or another utility such as Darik's Boot and Nuke. Then attempt to partition the drive and install the operating system. If this procedure does not work, come back and let us know why not so someone can figure out what to do next.

 

[Slikkster]

You can also use "KillDisk" Free version, which not only erases everything on the drive, but also deletes old partitions. Should be able to repartition and format after that.

http://www.killdisk.com/ (look for the Free Download version ).

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Have you tried booting from a Win98se bootdisk (http://www.bootdisk.com), deleting the partitions, recreating the partitions, and trying to format it all?

 

[ITJunkie]

Originally posted by: Nik
Have you tried booting from a Win98se bootdisk (http://www.bootdisk.com), deleting the partitions, recreating the partitions, and trying to format it all?

My question exactly....