How do I format the hard drive C, in this case?
 

I fixed the LAptop, and Now I want to format the hard drive,. . I have windows XP sp2 media center edition 2002,The hard drive has two partitions,. volume C and volume D. the volume C,. has a capacity of 30 gig. but it says theres only 23 gig. available,. which is weird since I recovered the system to a factory defaults. I am looking inside the C voume,. and I dont see anything that has 7 gigabytes of size.-When I frst got the pc, I had 29.5 gig of free space. Anyways,. I right clicked the My Computer icon,. ...I clicked "Manage",. and I followed the steps in order to format ,. but it wont let me do that,.. the "format" opcion is shaded,,,instead,. the other volume,. ( D) is not locked and I could format it ,if I wanted to do so.

I also went into the command prompt,.. and I typed "format c:",.. I put the volume's name,. and finally says that there's another process that wont let me format it., and I dont know what to else to do.
Thanks for your help.

You CAN NOT format the disc (partition) that you are using. You must be in a different directory to format the directory that want to get formatted. That is why you would have been able to format "D"...because you were in "C"...different directories. The command prompt is not a different directory ..but a program installed on "C" to emulate a DOS environment!

If you just fixed the computer ( back to factory defaults)why would you want to format it now....why not just format it and re-install the operating system to begin with as that would have surely fix it and saved a lot of time in trying to repair it.!

The only way that you could have 29.5 gigs of free space on a 30 gig partition "C" is by only having the boot files located there and the operating system located on another partition. To the best of my memory, I know of no major computer builder that set up a computer that way. It is only done on computers built by techs and they would not use 30 gigs for the partition as they would know that it would be nothing but wasted space.

Windows XP SP2 MCE 2002 uses right at 3 gigs of space for installation with all the driver files and programs. More than likely you fixed your computer by over installing the operating system with another version. that would explain the 7 gigs Something that I have seen happen by novice techs on more than one occasion.

If you want to re-do the system then enter the BIOS (set-up) by pressing the appropriate key at boot (F1, F2, DEL...etc) Set the first boot device to CDrom...save and exit. Start the computer with the CD installation disc and follow the prompts...