Re: Unable to format hard disk



Pat wrote...
>
>Somebody gave me their old laptop (IBM ThinkPad T22) which wasn't booting.
>I tried reformatting the hard disk (after booting from a Windows XP Pro CD),
>and although it appeared to be reformatting, at the end of the process
>(which took almost 8 hours!) it came back saying it was "unable to format
>the selected partition...". Does this mean the HD is bad and needs to be
>replaced?

8 hours to format a drive, incredible.

How about just install XP with the XP Pro CD, without pre-formatting?
During the installation, chhose to install on say, 4 GB of disk space.
The installation will format just the 4 GB and install the OS on it.

If you're lucky (when install is OK), boot up to XP and do the
remaining formating.

If you have a 3rd party partition utility, like Acronis Partition
Expert, it can format a HDD in minutes, not hours.

Good luck.


.



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