I have been trying to help my buddy install Windows on his wiped out computer. It has been formatting for 8 hours and its on 22%. Does it normally take that long or is there something wrong.

Hi Jeff,

Depends on the size of the hard drive and the speed of the computer but I have never seen one take 8 hours.

Should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-20 minutes, again depending on the size of the drive and speed of the computer.

Is this a Master or Slaved drive?

How are you going about performing the format?

Mesich

Mesich,

This is a Quantex SM66X, 30GB hard drive, Intell Pentium 111 800MHZ processor. We put in Windows 98 CD and started to download it, it said that the disk had to be formatted before we continue, so I clicked format disk.

Get a Bootdisk.

Download the bootdisk and insert a floppy.
Select the downloaded file and it will extract to the floppy.

Insert the floppy and boot the computer.

At the A:\>type format c:/s [Enter]

Post back.

Good Day!
Mesich

There is something wrong for sure. I would reboot with a win98 boot disk. Select #2 to allow cdrom support. At the prompt A:\> type format c: and press enter.
After it is done, you go to the cdrom drive and type setup.

Jeff,

The above was assuming that the drive of course was the C: drive.
Just want to make sure you don't format the wrong drive if there is more than one on the computer.

Mesich

I typed in format c: in A prompt and it says BAD COMMAND OR FILE NAME

Did you get a bootdisk from the link I posted above?

Mesich

'Bad command or file name' means format.com is not on the floppy (or you mistyped).

I downloaded the file and typed in format c:/s and it also stated bad command, MAN I need a drink lol

Hey I typed in fdisk and it took me to display partition information, do you know anything about that?????

When you type in fdisk select the option to display partition information.
What does it say there?

Mesich

yeah....you need to make a DOS partition in FDisk, and then format that partition with format.com......(format c:)

How to f-disk and format

Link at Homepage above.

Bad Command or Filename means that format.com is not on the bootdisk, as stated above. Get a bootdisk here instead:

Bootdisks

When you boot the computer, choose option 2?..."Start my computer WITHOUT CD-ROM support." Then format the HD with the command:

format c: (ENTER)

Don't use the format C: /s command. Instead, copy the system files to the HD using the command:

SYS C: (ENTER)

Doing it this way frees up conventional memory & can speed up the format process. After the drive has been formatted, reboot. This time choose option 1?..."Start my computer WITH CD-ROM support." Then either navigate to the Win 9x directory & run setup, or copy the Win9x directory to the HD & run setup from the HD (better option.) To copy the Win9x directory to the HD, go to this link:

Copy Win9x Directory to Harddrive

If you choose to do it this way, reboot again, this time without the bootdisk. Navigate to the newly created directory (C:\Win9x) and type:

setup (ENTER)

Running setup from the HD is faster, eliminates many read/write errors, and has the advantage that you never get prompted to insert the Windows CD when you change hardware or configuration in the future. If HD space is a problem, you can always delete the directory later.

HTH

Dave

How long does it take to format drive C?
10 second if the pc have installed before..
a:\format c: /c/q/u

first after all, the easiest way is go to others pc that already installed with Windows that you planed to installed 4 ur friend (e.g Windows 98se) go to start>setting>controlpanel>add and remove software>startup disk click on creat disk button and it'll ask you whether to inser blank 1.44mb floppy disk and Windows 98se CD... insert it.....
wait till your startup disk finished and go to : my computer c:\windows\command and find format.com and fdisk.exe copy them to startup disk (overwrite if necessary)
Then boot your pc with these startup disk and choose Start my computer without cd-rom support for faster access to fix ur disk......
if there is a lot of "announcements" told by the system (on startup) that told you your hard disk not partition yet..... run fdisk by typing a:\fdisk first because ur hd need to be partitioned then follow the on screen instruction........ first view ur partition information and if there no partition defined, create a partition by pressin' "1" create a partition and "1"primary partition.... for startup, then there is a message that told you to use maximum size of HD space and make the partion ACTIVE, press Y and it enough 4 u 2 learn only 2 create a single partition on single disk........after all the procedurs done, press esc and reboot ur pc by pressing ALT-CTRL-DEL and make sure ur startup disk is inside floppy and choose "Start my computer with CD-ROM Support" at A promt type FORMAT C:
After the formating completed reboot ur pc by pressing ALT-CTRL-DEL and make sure u choose "start my computer with cd-rom support" 2 make sure that ur hd is well formatted and partitioned type c:\ if the output is "invalid drive specification" run format again....
if it can change to c:\
run these command c:\md win98se
to make a folder for installalition file
then change to your cd-rom (considering ur cd as d:) type d:\
it'll change to d:\
then type d:\cd win98
it'll change to d:\win98
then:d:\win98 copy *.* c:\win98
it'll copy all the file inside the folder to ur drive c:
after completed the procedurs
type d:\win98 cd\
take away ur cd from cdrom
then type d:\c:
it'll change to drive c:
c:\cd win98
c:\win98
run this command to setup
c:\win98 setup /iw/iq/is
follow the instruction to installed
IF ur HD already partitioned and when u format it took a radiculous hour, make sure there is no msg told "trying to recover allocation unit" that means a BAD SECTOR
if ur HD have a bad sector and still under guaratees send it for guarantees if no.... give it to me.............hehehehehe :P
or if the partition already there naybe ur master boot record corrupted type:
a:\fdisk /mbr
if everything failed...... please clear ur CMOS..... ok ....any thing,,,, ask again...... hahahahahahah,,,, when i was at the same moments i spoil my pc too.... practices make perfect.......