Tried to format my pc but it came up with the message, Format cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Format may run if this volume is dismounted first. ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID. Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (Y/N) y Volume dismounted. All opened handles to this volume are now invalid. Cannot lock the drive. The volume is still in use. So I was told to change my hard drive letter, and also have a go at switching the jumpers, and set the bios to default. I did this and now my pc freezes when the blue XP screen comes on.

If you are trying to format the system drive, usually drive C:, while Windows is running, you cannot. You would be asking Windows to commit suicide and it wont do it. If you want to format the system drive then you need to boot from your Windows XP CD and reinstall the Operating System, reformatting when prompted to do so. If it is some other drive other than the system drive, then boot to safe mode and try it from there. The chances are that you having something running in the background that is preventing the drive from being formatted. Messing about with jumpers and BIOS in order to format an otherwise working computer is the daftest thing I have heard for a long time. Put the jumpers back to where they were and configure your BIOS correctly. Stuart

Hi, I put the Win XP CD in and it still comes up with the blue Windows XP Screen, and freezes there.

Make sure you are in fact booting from the CD and not the hard disk. Check that the CD drive is the first boot device in the BIOS. Stuart

Hi, Ok done that but now I get a blue screen with a message: (Stop c0000221 (bad image checksum). The image imagehlp.dll is possibly corrupt. The header checksum does not match the computed checksum. Thanks

If what you want to do is compleatly remove all data and partition's on your hard drive why not use a wipe utility their are plenty avaiably on the net and lots of them are free if you didn't trust your operating system enough and decided to Format and reinstall then why would you trust it to do a proper format . In my opinion it is time to go outside of Microsoft to format your drive then you can reinstall on a clean drive. If you know what brand your Hard drive is that would be the first place to look for a Disk tool or Wipe utility Google would be the next If you would like some suggestion's or link's then post back otherwise good luck !

Hi, Thanks for that. I have downloaded a Maxtor Utlity Disk, everything was going well until I came to load it on the PC. It comes up with the option to boot from floppy or CD, problem is, my keyboard isn't working, but it does when in the BIOS settings and I have it on first boot CD Rom.