I added a 3rd hard drive to my desktop which has sp3 from xp i cloned the drive that had the operating system in bios i have it booting up from the new drive on and now i want to format the old drive but it says that you have to quit all the disk utilities and have no windows open that has the hard drive on it, i closed all the windows except for the format window and it still doesnt let me

Can you boot up the new drive with the old drive disconnected? It sounds to me like the cloning might not have been done correctly. What did you use to clone? "in bios" doesn't seem correct.

What is the physical configuration of the drives? Have you successfully booted the new drive without the old one present? "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

the computer has been restarted without the original drive on it i used the disk utility that came with the hard drive

How are you trying to format? Are you sure you are selecting the correct drive? Tell us what drives you have. Which is the drive with the operating System. Which drive are you trying to format.

What is the physical connection of the drives? Did you clone the new drive, then remove the old and put the new in the original drive's place? The more information you supply, the better. "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

I renamed the drives after i identified which ones they were the main drive is a tb with 3 partitions on it, the second drive 160gbs the one i formated has 2 partitions and the 3rd drive 60 gbs i have already formated and put new stuff on. the 2 i have in there originally were ide drives the new drive is sata the 1tb drive is the one with the operating system that i have cloned from the 160gb drive i tried to right click the drive from my computer then format, then close my computer and quick format and it said the drive was in use