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You are trying to format the same drive that you are booted to.

You have to get a different drive to boot to, and connect this drive as a
slave, then you can format it. Once you format it as a slave, you can revert
it to a master and load the new OS onto it.

You could boot to the XP Installation CD, then format the drive as a
function of the installation process.

You are going to loose the contents of this drive.





"mark pullen" <> wrote in message
news:. au...
> when I try To format my drive I get this message "format cannot run
> because
> the volume is in use by another process.format may run if this volume is
> dismounted first all opened handles to this volume would then be invalid
> would you like to force a dismount on this volume Y/N " I answer yes then
> i
> get this message "cannot lock the drive, the volume is still in use" why
> is
> this happening and how could i fix this problem. I am running winxp home
> edition with service pack 2 60gig hard drive 500 meg ram the drive is
> split
> into three partitions of 20g each I hope someone can shed some light,
> thanks
> mark.
>
>
>