cant get drive to format

[gibbones]

Hi I am having trouble to get a system to format the drive. This is not my machine just trying to do a favor and I eve put a drive I know works into the machine and it recognizes the drive on bootup however it gives me this error message "paramerter format not correct - c:

What gives is there somethng else wrong? The owner said it just quick on him on day and I thought it was the hard drive. thanks.

I merged your thread from the other forum - easier to help and track progress

Murf
Moderator

[gibbones]

Hi a friend of mine said his macine wont boot up any more after he shut it down. I tried to reformat the hard drive and gave me this parameter format not correct - c:. I even stuck an old drive I know works and it wont format either and gives me the same error message. I am beging to think that he may have something else wrong with it. Thanks

[GretaP]

Hi gibbones,
It sounds like the C: partition has been deleted or somehow "blown away".

As long as this drive does not have a Drive Overlay installed (like EZ-Drive or EZ-BIOS, to name a couple), boot from the startup floppy disk, and when you get to the A: prompt, key in:
FDISK
<ENTER>
say Y to large disk support
At the FDISK Options menu, key in 4 to Display partition information.
Post back here the results of that.

[jtdoom]

hi
done over the phone?

format
(spacebar)
C
double point
<enter>

[jtdoom]

if by any chance the double point key is faulty
(or the user has a different keyboard layout)

ALT + 058 gives :