Unable to format the hard drive - Gateway M675XL Special PC Notebook

You have to be the computers administrator to change any values on any hard drive on your computer

click start control panel user accounts on the users tab click the name of the computer administrator you must have full control

click start click to open on my computer you should see your usb drive could be E: or something right click select properties there will be an array of options

select the sharing tab option then advanced sharing make sure you have a tick in the share this folder box

then click permissions make sure you have all 3 boxes ticked full control changes and read in windows 7

click start control panel user accounts click on the administrators account if you have made one or you will have to create one in windows XP

click start right click on my computer select open
Right click the icon of your usb drive (It should be E:/ or something)
Click Properties in the menu that comes up
Click the Sharing tab
Click permissions
And finally, click Allow next to Full Control.

click start click on my computer you should see your usb drive

right click then select format

another way is to control panel administrative tools computer management disk management right click on your drive select format

hope this helps

You are plugging it in, going to windows, right clicking the drive - format - quick format and its not working?

Try right clicking the drive, going to properties, and run the error checking or disk checking for errors. Windows can attempt to clear the problem.

It's simple: download this Repair tool run it and it will format your USB even if it is write protected. Good luck!

You will probably need to remove the drive and use another computer to format it. You can buy an adapter to connect it to another pc as a USB drive and format it this way. They are not very expensive. Hope this helps.

if window is unable to format try to format it using some utility software like hp disc format utility
download link
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

Use this format tool

http://en.kioskea.net/telecharger/download-127-hp-usb-disk-storage-format-tool

Select server2 for download.

try to format in manage
>Right click my computer
>click manage tab
>click removable disk
>right click your pendrive
and format.

Have you tried booting from a Windows XP CD? If you have one available you can boot from it, delete the partition and format it. Works all the time for me.

Are you formatting a new disk or an existing one? Keep in mind that the rest of us do not know all the details that you know unless you tell us & thus it will take much longer to resolve your issue.
You said "after you tried it with XP CD". Dont know what you mean. What program did you use the first time & what steps did you do?

If it shows up in windows explorer as a drive, right click it and choose format and choose ntfs as the file format.

Do you know what format it is when you use linux? I dont think you can use a dos command to format an ntfs volume. Your message probably means it cant read FAT or FAT32 because it probably already is NTFS file format.