I need to perform a complete factory-type reformat on my hard drive. There is supposed to be a Dos command called 'fd del', that can do that. Can anyone send me that file or give me an FTP site for it.

You do not say which make, size or make of hard drive you wish to repair? However beware of LOW LEVEL FORMAT Utilities, unless they are by the correct manufacturer of your drive. This should always be done as a last resort only. Go look at: http://www.powerload.fsnet.co.uk/harddisk.htm for info and manufacture links. I favor the following utility myself: http://www.jetico.com/bcwipe.exe

My computer is a Dell Dimension 8100, shipped only a week ago. I installed Win200Pro over Millenium Me and did not know that I had to install a different chip set driver. End result is a c partition that no longer is recognized and in the map command appears as having 0 MB. I cannot perform dir or format or fdisk on it. The hard drive is the original Dell drive and is 60 GB. Dell support told me to use fd del command, which they can ship to me via postal mail , but only within about 10 days. I desperately need my computer to prepare for various talks I am giving and was looking for a quicker way of getting my hands on this dos command. I don't know why Dell cannot provide a download site or, if they don't want just anybody to use this command, a login ftp site. I don't know much about Dos commands and I had assumed that this was simply one of the generic Dos commands, like FDISK. From your answer it sounds like that might now be the case.

Did your computer come with any type of Restoration cd? Mine came with a bootable cd that restores my pc to it's original state when shipped. See if anything like that came with your computer...(Of course that's probably the first thing Dell would have told you if they supplied one, but, it's worth a shot.)

This page as a variety of boot disks (for when you are done) and a utility called delpart that will perform what you want.

Thank you very much for all the comments. I finally did find the fddel command on an ftp site. This command is used to erase track 0 on drive C and therefore deletes all partitioning info and reverts disk back to have one partition (that is what the description on the ftp site says). I used the command, but in my case it did not help any, since it turned out that my hard drive was physically damaged. I am getting a new one shipped today.