My hard drive has been formatted and I can't seem to do anything with my PC now. It has been partitioned into 3 drives (which can be accessed using their drive letters) all of which have been formatted. The PC no longer recognised my CDRoms. I have used a DOS version of the drivers, but I cannot access the actual drives using any drive letter. Also I cannot seem to use any of the dos commands i.e. I can't use the edit command it comes back with 'bad command'. It does however, let me use the echo command. does anyone have any idea how I can fix this. Many thanks

No operating system=cant do nothing. Theres no problem here. Just install an operating system or explain that this is a slave drive along with what you used to format and create these partitions and what it is your wanting to do with the drive. Format=erased everything. Erased everything=Cant do anything.

There are programs (free) out there that WILL let you recover from a format. Full recovery is possible if nothing has been done to the drive since the format.

See; http://www.computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/97770.html

Denise...I think we are a little confused as to what the problem is and what you want to do... Did you intentionaly set up 3 partitions and format each partition? Did you do this unintentionaly, accident? Do you have data on any of those 3 partitions you need to recover? Are you trying to install an OS on the C:\ partition and can't do it? For example...you can't use the edit command if you set up C:\ with a W98 boot disk because edit is not on that boot disk... If you can "see" drive C:\ but cannot access it, that is probably because you do not have command.com installed...for that you need to format with ... format c:/s ... You cannot see your cd drive probably because you do not have the cd drivers installed on C:\... If you have data you need to recover AFTER a refromat, then you need a data recovery program like Ontrack's Easy Recovery, DTiData, Final Data, etc...there are a number of them out there... Be advised, however, that if you have installed some files after your reformat, then and files that were written over will NOT be recoverable... If you use a data recovery program, you will need to take your HD to another computer and install it as a slave HD, install the data recovery program on the C:\ drive on the other computer, run the program and search on the D:\ (your hd) for the stuff you need...find it and copy that data to the C:\ drive on the other computer... When you have everything copied over to the other computer you need to save, then start all over reformatting your hd and reinstall everything... Hope this helps Steve

"For example...you can't use the edit command if you set up C:\ with a W98 boot disk because edit is not on that boot disk..." Edit.com is in the EBD cab which is extracted to the ramdrive created when using a 98 boot disk. "If you can "see" drive C:\ but cannot access it, that is probably because you do not have command.com installed...for that you need to format with ... format c:/s ..." A "sys c:" should be done as opposed to a format. This will copy the three files needed to make a disk bootable; MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, & COMMAND.COM. If a(nother) format is done, this will further reduce the chances of data recovery.