I am trying to format my c drive. After I insert my boot disk and reach the a:\ prompt I typed format c: but I get an error message saying the program cannot be run in DOS mode. Can anyone offer some help please?!?!?

You advise your operating system is XP, yet you are attempting format in dos. Why do you need to reformat anyway? To format in dos, you need a dos boot disc created from dos itself (say version 6.22) and its version of fdisk, format and chkdsk, possibly also SCANDISK. You may run into trouble if the disk is large and/or been used with FAT32 or whatever? FAT32 is used when a hdd/partition is greater than around 2gb. Then the bios on the pc may not recognise all the hdd capacity if it is large (sometimes >8gb) and a disc manager programis required form the hd to maker to overcome this. Good luck - keep us posted.

hi michelle, *i had xp pro on my comp and had no problems reformatting, this is how i did it: go to bootdisk.com and get a win98 bootdisk start ur comp with bootdisk, (go to BIOS and setup bootup device first if necessary), basically 'format C:' is the command u use. btw - use fdisk if u want to make partitions, etc. for multi-boot i think the link for bootdisk is as follows (btw put it on a clean formatted floppy): http://www.mirrors.org/archived_software/www.bootdisk.com/original.htm //0ut