Formatting the Ol' Skewl Way (in Dos)
 

I am trying to format in Dos, using script. I'm using WinXP, but still want to format in Dos. I have a Fdisk, and a win98 boot disk. I type in format c: /q, or format /? and it's all invalid. Does WinXP not need aformat disk? or am i typing everything wrong? I just want to format :cry:

If your booting from the 98 startup disk and trying to format a partition with XP on it, then you need to copy the 98 version of Format.com to the floppy disk. (download the file below)

If your hard drive is formatted NTFS you will not be able to read it or format it with a windows 98 boot disk. Most WinXP installations will be using the NTFS file system, since that is the default. If you want to reformat you will need to either delete the partition then recreate it then format fat32 or boot from the windows xp cd and format it there.

Re: Formatting the Ol' Skewl Way (in Dos)
 

instead of using format when booting from win98 startup disk, use fdisk first to delete the non-dos partition to delete the ntfs partition of your hardrive then create a dos partition. Maybe this would help.

If you want to use a floppy, I suggest you get the software you need for a Windows XP boot disk, which can handle NTFS, here.