[Tenmakk]

Hi. I have Windows Vista Premium. My E: Drive is/was used as my backup drive. Virus/Trojan scanners keeps finding trojans, etc. in my E: drive. I'd like to just wipe that drive clean. It says I can't format the drive however because it is already in use. This even happens in safe mode. I've already created an external backup with a DVD RW disc, and am planning to just keep using that as my backup. I feel it is safer that way. I will still create some backups on my E: drive though. Does anyone know of a way that I can format the drive successfully? Should I just go into the E: drive and manually delete everything?

Thanks, Brad

[Triple6]

Have you tried using Disk Management to delete the partition and creating a new one? To get at Disk Management right click on Computer and select Manage.

[davehc]

When you go into disk management, I think you will find that E: is marked as active. Activate, instead, your boot drive (probably C:?) then you will find you can format E:
Fwiw. After you have selected "manage" as advised above, you must then select "Disk management" and then right click the boot (C drive to alter its status. When you make it active, you will find that E: will automatically become non-active.

[Elvandil]

Do you have any idea what is being accessed on the drive? Check to see if you have System Restore turned on for that drive and turn it off. If you have any third-party defragmenters, like Raxco, O&O, or Diskeeper, they all monitor all drives all the time and need to have their services terminated.

One thing you can try: Go to Start > Run, and type:

cmd

At the command prompt, type:

chkdsk E: /f /x

The /x switch will close all handles on the drive (if possible) so that nothing will be accessing anything on the drive. If it is successful, then chkdsk will complete. After it is done, go to Disk Management and right-click the drive to format it while all the handles are still closed. If you'd rather erase the drive, additional steps are involved, but just formatting should be enough.

If none of that works, you can format it offline by making a boot CD: XP Recovery Console CD Image with autofmt.exe for formatting

Boot up the CD, choose "R" for "repair", log in.

Type: map
to see what drive letter is assigned to your E: drive in the Recovery Console. Then, say the drive letter is X:, type:

format /FS:NTFS X:

[Tenmakk]

Thanks for your help. I've tried all your suggestions, but nothing worked. The option to delete it is grayed out. My "C:" drive is already marked as active. And "E:" is inactive.

I did have O&O running and disabled it, but it didn't help. I tried your suggestion to type chkdsk E: /f /x at run, but it said:

"chkdsk cannot the volume because it is a system drive or there is an active paging file would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts?"

A typed "y" and when chkdsk started it restarted the computer I still couldn't format the E: drive. It was grayed out.

I tried doing all of this in safe mode as well, but it still didn't work.

Also I wasn't able to create the CD using the ISO file you provided. I burned it on to a CD, but nothing happened when I inserted it into the computer. I also tried downloading daemon tools but it just hung when I inserted the ISO file there.

Would it be okay if I just manually went into the drive and deleted everything?

Thank you,
Brad

[Tenmakk]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong with the boot CD. I burned the ISO file you linked to on it the CD, restarted my computer, pressed the esc key, and it and had me select which drive to boot on. I selected the CD/DVD drive, but it still booted directly to Windows, and I couldn't follow the rest of the instructions you gave me. Am I doing something wrong?

Would it hurt anything if I just went into the drive and deleted everything manually?

Thanks,
Brad

[Elvandil]

Probably you can't delete everything manually because something is in use.

If you want to still try to do it from Windows, then try OpenedFilesView. Look and see what files are open on the drive so you can close the programs that are accessing them. Or, do it by CD------->

The download is an iso image. You should see files on the CD when you explore it. If you see the iso file, you didn't burn the image correctly.

How To Write ISO Files To CD

Free ISO burning apps:

Standalone ISO Burner (Be sure to check the "Finalize" box.)
Active@ ISO Burner
EasyISO
BurnISO
ISOBurn
ISO Recorder for XP (Uses XP's burner and adds context menu - Vista version also available.)

[davehc]

Its your pagefile on E: which is causing the problem. perhaps you previously had another OS (XP?) on E:
First do this.
Open the Control Panel. Sellect the "Classic" View.
Select "System" and then, on the left "Advanced System settings"
Select "Settings " under "Performance."

Select Advanced tab and then, under Virtual memory, select Change.
Now make sure you only have the virtual memory page file, only runing on C: Should it also show on E:, then select no paging file, for E:
Save and reboot.
Manually delete the pagefile on E:

You should now be clear to follow the steps for Disk management, above.