MAJOR Problem, reformatting

I wanted to reformat my parents computer. I backed up all their info on to an external hard drive. I stupidly inserted my windows cd before i had reformatted. It installed windows again. Now its messed up.



When booting normally I get to the windows log in screen and it immediatly goes to blue screen.



I can only go into windows with safe mode. I try to format and it says that the disk is being used or somthing.



So I boot in safe mode with command prompt and type in Format C:

I get this message:



Format cannot run becuase the volume is in use by another process. Formatmay 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? I select yes and it says cannot lock driv, the volume is still in use.





Is there anyway to reformat in the BIOS or without booting into window?

Cant you just boot to the CD, reformat and start over, is this XP

When you insert the Windows CD, it will give you the option to reformat the drive. You should always do that, dont install over the current version of Windows without reformatting.

Should I do that in Safe Mode or should I boot from the CD?

Boot to the CD

I will try that.



EDIT: I began booting from the CD and it worked. What I did before was used an old Windows CD to boot from. It didnt work, i used the updated CD and it seems to be working. I deleted the old partition and made a new one and its installing Windows.



Thanks for the help if it works.

http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winx...exfullpage.htm