Vista - Formating Help

I decided to do a complete reinstall or Vista on my HP Pavilion Laptop, so I booted into the vista disk and formated the drive vista was on, and then I tried to format my other drive and it just sits there and does nothing, forcing me to hard restart. So, I boot up again, and try to delete it, but it says:

"Failed to delete the selected partition. [Error: 0x8007001b]"


what can I do to format the partition, or just delete it?

Hi PersonoftheFurby,

Welcome to Vista Forums.

I would just delete all of the partitions and create them again in the Drive options (advanced) area, then format them. That usually works better.

Shawn

well, the weird thing is, its like a partition, but everything recognizes it as another hard disk. I've tried ubuntu, iAtkos (a Mac OS X cd for a PC), and XP (which I cant install).

I think it started when I had XP. I thought it would be a good idea to dual boot, and it gave me no problem, but I used partition magic, which is the thing that made it seem like two separate hard disks.

When ever I start up the computer, it says SMART error predicted or something like that.

You should be able to do this from booting from the Vista installation DVD and clicking on Drive options (advanced) when you get to where you select the drive to install Vista on. It should allow you to delete all partitions listed. You should then be able to create a new ones, if you wanted to, with the size you select there. Next, you would select Format to format the partitions.

Hello personofthefurby

You may want to check out this link below!

Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I hope this helps.


Later Ted

I've looked at the wikipedia before, but I couldn't find anything there to help me, but then again I didn't really know what I was looking for.


@Brink

I clicked advanced, the options are Refresh, Delete, Format, New, Load Drivers, and Extend, with Extend and New being un-clickable. The first drive is formated to NTFS and I can install vista there, but the other one is not in NTFS, and I can't format it or delete it.

Should I just install vista on the one capable of doing it, or should I try to install XP, and use Partition Magic?

Hello again personofthefurby

Your HDD may be trying to warn
you of an impending failure.


Later Ted

Well I'm pretty sure its one hard drive, but Partition Magic made EVERYTHING look at it as two. So why would only it only say on half of it will fail?

Hi personofthefurby

I don't know a lot about this, that is why I
suggested you research it.

Where are you getting this notice? Which OS?
Maybe someone with more insight into
SMART can assist you.


Later Ted

personofthefurby,

It would not hurt anything to try installing Vista on the good partition and see if Partition Magic can fix the other one. All you will be losing is time.

Hope it works for you,
Shawn