How do you format using CMD/Dos prompt??

[optinox]

Hi all,

I realize a copy of Win XP would normally give you a blue screen with option to format the hardrive but I want to know how to use cmd prompt to format a drive, I tried it on my buddies computer that's running xp home and this is what happened...

I typed in format C: after that it came up and said C: drive was an ntsf file, then after that line it said 'label disk volume' then the cursor was flashing beside it as if it was a question, what do I type beside that and how do I format a drive using cmd prompt?

**if this isn't too much trouble, how do I access individual files/folders off a CD using cmd prompt, especially if there's different folders and so forth on the CD, and also my hardrive in general, so I had a folder called 'movies' within the folder 'my documents' how would I access that folder through cmd prompt?

[John Prophet]

to get around in dos you just have to learn the commands

cd = change directory
dir = directory..which mean "list what is in this folder"

say you are in the c:\ to see what is there you just go dir

so it lists out the files and folder etc such as

[mydocu~1]
[progra~1]
[windows]
boot.ini

in DOS they use shortcut names to keep it under 8 letters plus 3 letter extension

in Xp cmd prompt it may be different

so to go into "my documents" you do C:\ cd mydocu~1 that means "change directory to my documents"

so then you are sitting at c:\mydocu~1 so from there you can go "dir" again to see what is in there


to go back up one level...like back from "my documents" to the c:\ you can do "cd ." that little "." means for it to go back one level

to go to a cd drive you first type in the letter of the drive

like from the C:\ you would type in d:

then youd be at the D:\

etc


JP

[elmers]

to go back up one level...like back from "my documents" to the c:\ you can do "cd ." that little "." means for it to go back one level

HA

Actully "cd." would mean "stay in the same directory your in now".
"cd .." would mean "go back one level".

[kenboyles72]

First: if the drive was formated ntfs, then a dos bootdisk would not be able to read it(dos does not recognize ntfs). if you wanted to reformat it(and use fat32 file system), then you would have to run fdisk, delete the partition, recreate the partition, format it using fat32 from dos bootdisk(format c. if you wanted to reformat it and keep the ntfs structure, you could run setup from cd, and choose to format drive w/ntfs from there.

Second: when booting from floppy, you get to command prompt, type "dir"(w/o quotes), if you see any files, then you could gain accsess to the files. but remember, dos only has the 3-8 rule for file naming. ie "my documents" would be "mydocu~1". if you typed "cd mydocu~1", then you would go to that folder. if the other files are longer than 8 characters, then they would be shortened down to 8 (******~1). files on cd would be the same way.