I need to wipe a drive clean so I can reformat it (don't ask)
Windows XP SP2 will not load, so I made it a slave drive on another computer and want to reformat it before putting it back in the other PC
any freeware out there that will help?
Thanks guys! :-/If it's jumpered correctly and recognized in machine #2 then you can right click on it and format it in MyComputer (whichever drive letter it shows up as). If you try to load Windows on it there and then TRANSFER to a new computer you will probably have no joy.

If you copy over the i386 files to the freshly formatted drive, you can probably load it from there but why can it not load Windows normally is the question.

Now it is saying that the drive is not formatted (it is calling it Drive E, the slave drive) I clicked OK to format it and it went all the way through the procedure and then said it could not be formatted. WHat now?What happened when you originally tried to load XP normally?

I am interested in what has happened to this poor drive.

You can boot with a Win98SE boot disk (free at www.bootdisk.com) and run FDISK to delete the partition(s) and then create one (You will need to make it a primary partition and make it active)It is my wifes computer (we live in Rio de JAneiro) This machine was bought from someone who builds computers from scratch and sells them We have had problems and recently it was REBOOTING every half hour or so for no reason. I had this problem awhile back and changed the ram and cooler and fixed it. Well it came back, now I can't be sure if it is a bug in the hard drive or what. I, Myself have an Emachine, a bit old, but decent computer for the price. The only working copy of Windows XP I have was the Emachine software. I hooked up the HD from her's to mine as a slave and reformatted it using this CD. WHen I went to put the HD back in her machine, it gave e the blue screen of death and would not boot up. Now I put the HD back in mine as a slave and tried to use a Win XP version that I had downloaded off Limewire and it is giving me this CORRUPTION MESSAGE, I know, I know... I am crazy, but I live in Brazil, what can I say, it is not the civilized world and we SOMETIMES have to mke due with what we have. I will try what yo said, I am not desperate, yet. Sorry, but we cannot help with pirated versions of Windows.

If you really want a clean slate buy a legitimate version.

Remember that there are free versions of Linux all over the place.

Click the link below for more info.Yep, if it was made for an eMachines restore it most likely will not work (reads from the bIOS, etc.) and even if you got it working it would not be a legal copy and would not work after 40 days anyway with the Microsoft Activation. I think the previous advice was good.

how about some free linux???