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Damian7 said
on 9/22/2007 Hello everyone.
I was trying to start up a laptop, which it seemed to have a problem with the hard drive, with an external hard drive that I have for sometime to keep my pictures and stuff.I connected the external hard drive to the laptop and begun to install Windows XP again, but there was one step that asked to format the hard drive and I assumed it was going to format the hard drive that is in the laptop, so I clicked yes and started formatting the external one, I tried to stop it but when I plugged it to my desktop it seems all the files are gone.Is there any way I can access to those files again? Does anyone have an idea of what to do? I'd appreciate any help.
Peekas said
on 9/13/2007 This helped me a ton! I was worried I wouldn't be able to do this myself. I wouldn't have if it wasnt for this information. This saved me buying a new laptop. I only spend 80 bucks on the hard drive so I save alot of money. Thank you!!! If you are thinking about changing your hard drive its super easy if you follow these instructions. Thanks again!
Rheeside said
on 8/31/2007 I had just added a 500GB drive to my Mesh PC and could see the drive in device manager but not in My Computer. I followed your advice and now everything is working perfectly!
Many thanks
Phil
www.thoughtcrew.com
bialazourka said
on 8/29/2007 Same problem as zachthac, cannot delete the partition as the box for this is grayed out.Help!!
fanie4u said
on 8/29/2007 excellent step....i could format my system perfectly...thanks ehow!!
sageofthesea said
on 4/19/2008 For those having trouble due to a greyed out "Format Partition" option -- here's one thing I needed to do to enable it. The drive I wanted to format held a system page file. If (Page File) appears next to the drive in question, you have to get rid of it before you can format. To do so: Right Click on My Computer, Click Properties, Click the Advanced Tab, Click Settings under Performance, Click the Advanced Tab, Click Change under Virtual Memory, Select the Drive you wish to format and select the "No Paging File" radio button, and then hit Set and OK. OK out of everything, and restart your computer when it prompts you to. This should allow you to format the drive, if you had the Page File issue. Note, if your computer doesn't have enough memory this may cause Windows to grind to a halt when it boots next. Solution, put the page file on a different harddrive.
XPUser said
on 8/17/2007 So can this process really free up space on the hardrive? Like go from 10 GB to the near max (50+)?
wariat said
on 8/7/2007 Ummm when i get to the part where i have to Delete the Partition it is grey and can not be clicked so i cannot delete it. is there somthing i am doing wrong?
wariat said
on 8/7/2007 Ummm when i get to the part where i have to Delete the Partition it is grey and can not be clicked so i cannot delete it. is there somthing i am doing wrong?
santonib1 said
on 7/31/2007 I'm also having problems when I get to the part where i have to Delete the Partition it is grey and can not be clicked so i cannot delete it. is there somthing i am doing wrong? Bart @ santonib1@comcast.net
zachthac said
on 10/21/2007 Ummm when i get to the part where i have to Delete the Partition it is grey and can not be clicked so i cannot delete it. is there somthing i am doing wrong?
zachthac said
on 4/12/2008 Ummm when i get to the part where i have to Delete the Partition it is grey and can not be clicked so i cannot delete it. is there somthing i am doing wrong?
aistule said
on 7/24/2007 Seriously - thank you so much! I'm not all the way through my formatting, but it looks like it will work! The best set of instructions on the www!! Thanks again.
anck said
on 7/19/2007 Can anyone help.. Delete partition is greyed out.. What can I do???
Rasburyjam said
on 7/8/2007 My HP laptop came loaded. It didn't come with separate CD, but rather I had to make Recovery Discs. Along with the Recovery Discs, I have been backing up my entire computer onto an external hard drive.
Recently my computer cashed. I used the Recovery Discs to reformat and recover everything, but when I do a search, all the old files are still on the computer. If I formatted first, I expected the drives to be blank slates. Then I was going to use my recent backup from the external drive to bring me up to date with only the programs and files that I want on the computer. Can I use these instructions to accomplish that task, or will I always have all that past "junk" when I do my searches?