XP Setup Cannot Format Drive

If I could get a hand with this, it would be fantastic.

Each time I attempt to run the windows XP setup (I have
tried both the full and upgrade versions), I recieved an
error saying that Windows could not format my hard drive
and that it may be damaged. The drive is a Western
Digital 40gig. I know it works from previous use. After
going to WesternDigital.com and downloading their
diagnostic software I ran three tests on the drive, one
of which took 6 hours (with a 1Ghz chip!). After these
tests, I am still finding the same error.

Some things that I have attempted already:
-The WD software reset the drive to zeros
-I have tried the quick format, a full format and the leave file system intact options in Windows setup
-I have attempted to access the drive by using a floppy boot disc and getting there through DOS, but again, it was not recognized.

Thanks!
Chris
[email protected]

Hi and welcome to the forums.

Try using a DOS boot disk and formatting it manually as FAT32. Then install onto that partition.

Try a FDISK /MBR to clear the master boot record first using a DOS boot disk. Once that completes, try FDISKing and creating partitions followed by formatting in Fat32. If that fails, try the killsec app from jay in this thread, http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76953 , and try again with FDISK and formatting. If that still fails, I have another app that may clear the HDD that I can email.

I had a friend that had a similar problem. XP would format it up to ~97% and then fail. What we did was partition the drive in half (20/20) and then setup WinXP on the first drive. There was no problem with formating the first half and I haven't heard back so I assume the second half was fine formated on its own.

I had another simmilar problem just recently. I bought a refurb dual proc machine. When I tried to install Win2k on it the format would immediatly fail. I low level formated it and error checked it. The error check found a bunch of bad blocks at the end and started correcting them, I got impatient and canceled it. Back in the Win2k setup I partitioned it into ~8gig and 500megs. (9gig scsi drive). Windows then had no problem formating EITHER partion, although I haven't checked the integrity of the second one again.