Hi

Hopefully someone can help me.

 Im struggling to format my hard drive.

 I dont have any recovery CDs, or my original XP CD if I ever had one. the only thing I have is my Vista upgrade DVD.

 My PC will not boot up nomally into Vista as it was, this just happened one night. Ive changed the first boot device to CD a bunged in the Vista upgade. You can then either try to upgarde to vista, but it tells you to do this from a normally booted version of windows, and if you add the key it recognises its already installed.. If you try and format the hard drive from here it wont let you, it gets to the delete partition stage and then wont let you.

Ive booted in safe mode and also in F4, tried reverting to last known good configuration, but that hasnt worked.

I would fdisk from a command prompt but I can get one, although Im sure there must be a way. Im suprised theres not one in F4 or the BIOS screen, well that I can see anyway.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, its driving me mad!

.....................................I have now found a command prompt, X:/windows but typing fdisk doesnt work, same applies as above please 

 Thanks

  jmcj

If all you want to do is wipe the drive using a Vista boot DVD, the command is DISKPART nowadays instead of FDISK.  I believe there is a "Repair your Computer" link (or something like that) as part of the setup, then you can choose to go into a Command Prompt and use DISKPART to wipe it out.

diskpart
list disk      // look at this list carefully!  Make sure you know which disk # is the one you want !!
select disk 0   // or whatever the # of the drive you want to wipe was from LIST DISK
clean

Be advised, though, that if all you have is a Vista Upgrade DVD, I don't believe you can re-install Vista again if you do this.  There are other repair options available when you boot from the DVD, one of which repairs the boot information. There is also a tool called BCDEDIT available from the repair mode command prompt that will let you fix stuff manually.  If the boot data is hosed, anyway.  If Vista starts to boot up and then dies, that option won't help you.  Have you tried the various repair commands on the DVD?

Be careful with DISKPART, once you issue that CLEAN command, it's all over for your data.

Thanks very much for your help, I shall give it a go, but have pretty much decided to get a new one. Losing my data is no big deal, its a dedicated media centre, so theres no business or personal documents, and all music photos and films are stored on an external HD. The min spec Im looking for would be as follows, any comments welcomed, I dont even know what half you bits and bobs are lol

Intel Core 2 Duo

250Gig HD (only store weekly TV programmes)

4gb 1066Mhz

DVD +/- RW Drive

Wireless

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

2 Freeview Tuners 

Video card as it comes (dont game) 

Remote Control

.............and maybe a Linsys or such product so I can watch it in other rooms of the house

Get a corei3 system w/ integrated graphics.

There are 4 disks listed 0-3 and they all appear empty and the same

Disk1 Status - No Media;  Size - 0B; Free 0B

Anymore help available?

Great thanks for the hint.

 Ive just Googled that, are you recommending because they are 35% faster, or because they work well with WMC?

I format hard disks everyday,

 when stuck on occasion I go back to the root of things, I would open the box and locate the hard disk and it will have the manufacturer and model on the drive (If you dont aleardy know the details)

Example: Western Digital (WDC5002ABYS, now look for diagnostics for your model) download the the Western Digital diagnostics from WDC.com make a bootable from the ISO (May have to temp borrow a friends) Boot off the CD then on the list is ZERO OUT THE HARD DISK

You will now be able to completley erase the hard disk.

If yours is another brand Seagate also has free tools on thier website

I would suggest you run the diagnostics on the hard disk first though because you may have a failing hard disk, no point of zeroing out if it does not pass the SMART, Short or long diagnostics.

jonahmcjonah

Hi

Hopefully someone can help me.

 Im struggling to format my hard drive.

 I dont have any recovery CDs, or my original XP CD if I ever had one. the only thing I have is my Vista upgrade DVD.

 My PC will not boot up nomally into Vista as it was, this just happened one night. Ive changed the first boot device to CD a bunged in the Vista upgade. You can then either try to upgarde to vista, but it tells you to do this from a normally booted version of windows, and if you add the key it recognises its already installed.. If you try and format the hard drive from here it wont let you, it gets to the delete partition stage and then wont let you.

Ive booted in safe mode and also in F4, tried reverting to last known good configuration, but that hasnt worked.

I would fdisk from a command prompt but I can get one, although Im sure there must be a way. Im suprised theres not one in F4 or the BIOS screen, well that I can see anyway.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, its driving me mad!

.....................................I have now found a command prompt, X:/windows but typing fdisk doesnt work, same applies as above please 

 Thanks

  jmcj

Hi,

I believe there was a workaround for installing from an upgrade disk, that is still valid - when you install, please ensure you enter the correct version details, but not provide the key details.  Go through the complete installation.

When the installation is complete, please then go through the installation process again, selecting the partition that you installed the version above, entering the key details correctly - this should then install everything for you.

 Tony