Solved Windows was unable to complete the format

[lordgaspode]

Hi there, I have had the message in the title when trying to format my E drive, I searched this on google and found your forum. I tried the option that was shown about changing the C drive to active, and doing startup repair 3 times, but this has not fixed the issue.

Please, any advice would be helpful, this is getting tiresome.

Thanks in advance

 

[Layback Bear]

Welcome to the forum.
Complete this tutorial by Golden so the good folks here can have a look.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

 

[lordgaspode]

 

[Layback Bear]

We are having a communication problem.
Many of us do not want to go off site to see things.
That is one of the purpose of the tutorial.
Because I ticked on you picture now I have to leave the forum and do some security scans.

Use the paper clip like in the tutorial.

 

[lordgaspode]

sorry, here you go

 

[Imrankhan]

Hi,

You can use the following steps to de-active a active partition:

1. Open Command Prompt.
2. Type: diskpart
3. At the DISKPART prompt, type: list disk (This command will list all the disks that you have)
4. In the next prompt, type: select disk # ( # means the number of the disk which contain the wrong active partition )
5. At the DISKPART prompt, type: list partition
6. Use the command: select partition # (# means the number of the partition that you want to mark as active)
7. Inactive the active partition with command: inactive
Then format.

 

[lordgaspode]

Hi,

You can use the following steps to de-active a active partition:

1. Open Command Prompt.
2. Type: diskpart
3. At the DISKPART prompt, type: list disk (This command will list all the disks that you have)
4. In the next prompt, type: select disk # ( # means the number of the disk which contain the wrong active partition )
5. At the DISKPART prompt, type: list partition
6. Use the command: select partition # (# means the number of the partition that you want to mark as active)
7. Inactive the active partition with command: inactive
Then format.

I tried this, and it still says windows was unable to complete the format

 

[Layback Bear]

I see you now have a active/boot flag on partition C. That is good.

Lets have a little test first.

Disconnect Drive 1 and 2. Then see if it will boot.

That will verify that Disc 0 C partition will boot.
If it boots hook the drives back up and remove the active flags from Disc 1 and 2 partitions D and E.
Then check if partitions of your choice on Disc 1 and/or 2 will format.

 

[lordgaspode]

I restarted this evening as usual, and windows had me run a startup repair on E: drive, after the restart completed, I was able to format the drive, thanks for the help though, it was appreciated.

 

[Layback Bear]

I'm trying to understand what happened.
Could you explain exactly the steps you took and tell us what was on partitions D & E on drives 1 & 2.

I'm trying to understand why Windows 7 would ask for a Startup Repair on E.

We need members to share how they fixed a problem so other could learn if they have the same problem.