Ultimately screwed.
 

Wow, listen to this doozy. Now, I come home for Thanksgiving and decide to install EQ2 on my Mom's (faster, more recent) computer to kill time when the family is not around. I get the dreaded "Crashes when you click Play" problem. So I'm thinking I should reinstall some drivers, update this, update that.

Nothing.

So now I'm thinking I should make sure Windows is updated. I downloaded SP2 in Aug, or Sept, whatever. Now, when I check the current windows version, it says "Service Pack 1." Odd. So I go to the WIndow's Site. Sure enough, I need to download SP2 and install it. So I do, about 15 times in a row. It doesn't register on my computer. It always says it needs to be downloaded and never does anything about it. It continually downloads a 0kb file. wtf.

So now, it's time to reformat. Yeah, nice try. Can't use windows interface to do it, the "format" option is never highlighted for any of my drives. No problem, I will just boot from CD. Sounds like a good plan. Unfortunately, it tells me I have an "unknown drive" when I attempt to reformat. Then, when I try and repair my drive, it automatically fails. Gives me an error message and shuts down the computer.

She put McAfee on the computer when she got it. Now, whenever I start McAfee, it fails seconds after I start it. Can't install any other free virus software either, it also fails.

About the only thing I've successfully done all day is download AdAware. So I've got that going for me . . . which is nice.

Does anyone have any tips for me? Besides staring at the six car pile-up that is my Mom's computer, is there any good way to format this beast? Any of the convential means seem impossible. Doing it through the MS-DOS prompt tells me my volume is in use and is locked. And when I reboot in DOS it tells me that I "cannot format a removable media (C:)." I'm completely beside myself. All I want to do is level my 16 shaman!

Woefully beat down,
Gabby

Edit: Following info related

OS: XP Pro SP1 (Supposed to be 2, I've DL'd/installed it, wtf!)
Processor: P4 @ 3ghz
Motherboard: I don't know, and I don't really know how to find out. It's a Dell XPS Gen_2
RAM: 1.0gig ddr
HD: 120gb
Media: floppy, Zip, CDROM, CDR, DVD, etc... All
Browser: IE

You could get a windows 98boot disk and use fdisk to format. If you have a windows 98 system around u can make them with that system.

I have XP Pro. I don't have any 98 systems around, although, I will check. Actually, no, I lied. I definitely don't have access to a 98 system. Thanks though.

pm me ur email address and ill send u the files and u can copy them to a 3-1/2 if u would like

Going to give it a whirl Smackre, wish me luck and thanks a lot!

gl ive formated tons of computers that way over the years.

Well, I'm back. When I try to boot from disk it gives me the "Non-system disk" blah blah blah, remove and hit any key.

Another defeat! Bah ha!

hmmm i even tried those files to make sure they booted right. I have no problem booting off them on my comp.

Well, at least I got one thing accomplished. I was able to download a different kind of virus software (AVG) and kill off 600 infected files. Now, apparently, I'm able to actually download and install SP2. I'll keep you posted.

Yeah, I retried but could not get that disk to work! I extracted them, copied them, and that's it. Who knows?

If you can't reformat from Windows CD, have you tried using a liveCD like Knoppix? It comes with formatting tools, among other things.

No, I haven't. Thanks for the tips gentlemen.