Forgot my DOS

[CWF]

I'm using my old hard as an external backup. I was able to delete all the old files except 2, the old WINDOWS and Documents and Settings folders. These 2 will not delete for some reason, and because of them I couldn't reformat the drive. So I tried ridding them in Command Prompt, but my DOS is not so gooda.

Any help would be apprieciated.

Peace in God,

CW

[GT]

Windows protects it's system folders religiously.

You should be able to format the drive irregardless. If the drive letter is F:, doing the folloing from a command prompt should wipe it clean (assuming Windows XP).

format F: /FS:NTFS /V:bckdrv /X

The flags are:

/FS: = file system type, FAT, FAT32, or NTFS

/V: = lable of new drive (can be anything, best to keep it under 8 characters)

/X = forces the drive to be dismounted if necessary before being formated.

Edited August 16, 2006 by GreasyTech

[Bluzeman]

GT is correct. It shouldn't matter what is on the drive, you should be able to format it. That is the reason for the dire WARNING! message.

If DOS won't let you delete a folder, it may have hidden files in it. Easiest way around this is, if you still have the deltree command available, use it to delete the folder. If you don't have that, then you will have to go into the folder and run the attrib command (attrib *.* -s -r -h). Then delete the contents of the folder, then delete the folder itself.

Rick

[CWF]

Thanks, worked like a charm.