My D Drive apparently has a System partition. I cannot format the drive. There are three folders on drive backups, Wiindows, Program Files. These files are leftovers from a former PC. I have logged into D as an Administrator. When I try to format, I get message that System Partition cannot be formatted and the process stops.
Can someone tell me how to format this drive. Thanks.
Hi denneny
Can you upload an image of the disk management
Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image
I have attached Computer Management screenshot. It is a 473.1 KB file. I hope you can find it.
The D\ needs to be marked inactive first. Be positive you select the proper disk in diskpart.
Partition - Mark as Inactive
Afterwards use the Disk Management to delete the volume and try formatting then.
Partition or Volume - Delete
OK. I inactivated D drive. Next, I attempted to delete the volume in Disk Management. I was told drive is in use. I overrode that and said continue with delete.
It started but returned error message:
"Delete is not allowed on current boot, system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume"
What is wrong? Do I need to reboot or change some setting first?
Jim Denneny
Have you tried using Diskpart to format the drive?
Click ontype CMD inside Search programs and files box . Right click on CMD underneath Program(1) choose Run as administrator. Command Prompt will open up to this path C:\Windows\System32>_ . Type in the commands below press <ENTER> after each line
DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK 0
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK
EXIT
EXIT
NoteDisk 0 is where your D drive is which is your first hard drive
Finally, got D Drive formatted. That was not smart on my part. When I built PC, I had tech move data & program files to D: so as not to have to reinstall Win 7 from scratch. I moved Programs back over to C: and reinstalled them to get registry right. I moved data (docs, pictures, Data etc) back over to C:. He also moved system partition to D: for some unknown reason.
The computer would not reboot as Sys files had been removed from D: by format process. Thank God for Acronis Recovery disk with bootable media. I have done a recovery which should put D drive back into active status.
I won't try this again and if I ever install an OS upgrade again, it will be a total, fresh, clean install.
Thanks for the attempted help.
Jim Denneny
...and this beautiful tutorial might help you a bit (though I think you don't need it): Clean Install Windows 7
You are probably correct - clean re-install Win 7. I have a very smart friend taking a crack at it before that step is taken. D Drive had not been re-formatted as I thought. I recovered C Drive and its MBR using Acronis Recovery. Really weird BIOS sees both drives under hard drive but under boot priority it only sees the D Drive and CD/DVD. It will not boot period.
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