[tezkalow]

I just downloaded a MS-DOS 6.22 boot disk from http://www.bootdisk.com/ and mounted it on floppy disk. It works well, but typing "format c:" or even "format c:", it tells me "invalid drive specification". I tried to type "format c", another message appeared:"Parameter format not correct" Anyway, the floppy disk can only load itself. I checked for the bad sector and it did not have. The boot disk may have been a corrupted disk, I think. I need to format the hard drive ( C: )! Anyone can help with this? Thanks.

[Elvandil]

Is there a partition present to be formatted? What size/type?

Are you sure you want DOS formatting and partitions?

[tezkalow]

Floppy disk cannot load ( C: ), FDisk show the partition of ( A: ) drive.

[TheOutcaste]

DOS 6.22 can only format floppies and FAT16 partitions, or partitions that are not already formatted.

Fdisk doesn't show partitions on a floppy; it can't, because floppies don't have partitions. If you are seeing an A under Status, that is not a drive letter, it means the partition is Active.

A DOS 6.22 disk can only see the first 8 GB of a disk. It can't see anything larger. And it can only see and create 2 GB partitions.
The attached screen shot shows what a DOS 6.22 disk sees of a 40 GB hard drive, formatted NTFS. It sees it as a 2GB HPFS partition. It can't format it, it will give the Invalid drive specification error. All you can do is delete the partition, then create a 2 GB FAT16 partition

What OS is on the C: drive now?
And what are you trying to do; erase personal info from the drive, or format the drive prior to re-installing an operating system?. If the latter, what OS are you going to install?

Jerry

[tezkalow]

Format the drive prior to re-installing Microsoft Windows XP. C drive: 160 GB. thanks.

[Elvandil]

There is no need to format prior to installing. That can be done during setup. So just start the installation and read the pages as they appear.