Format You Hard Drive or Flash drive or Pen Drive or Memory card using MS - DOS

Sometimes you may not be able to format your drive using normal windows format option.
This may be due to some background process running in the drive. This may be due to viruses.
Here’s a simple method to Format ur drive.

This will be useful when you get following types of errors.
"Unable to format"
"Windows was unable to complete format"
Note that the format of drive will be FAT32 if u do by this method. So not recommended for internal hard discs

• Goto Start -> Run.
• Type Cmd & press Enter.
• Type the following command line

Format X:
(Here X: refers to your removable disk drive letter. It can be any letter depends on ur drive letter)
• Press Enter.
You may also need to specify name for flash drive (Volume Label). Its not always nessesary to give a label. So u can also just click enter.
You will get a warning like below

WARNING: ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE: E WILL BE LOST?
Proceed with Format? ? y
Verifying …

Then it will continue the formatting.

If there is any running process in the flash drive. It may be due to some viruses
You may need to face few more steps like below shown
Format cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Format may run if this volume is dismounted first.
ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID.
Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? ?
Type “Y” and enter
That’s it.
Again Sometimes you may get an error like below

invalid media or track 0 bad - disk unusable

Then the problem may be with hardware.

Unable to open .exe files or programs ??


Are you getting some thing like this "Choose the program you want to use to open this file" when trying to open an .exe file.

This problem occurs if the .exe file association in the registry is corrupt. This behavior is generally caused by viruses.

Given below are the steps to correct the registry entry.

Click Start, Run and type regedit.exe (To open registry editor)

If Registry Editor opens successfully, then navigate to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ exefile \ shell \ open \ command

Double-click the (Default) value in the right pane

Delete the current value data, and then type:

"%1" %*

(ie., quote-percent-one-quote-space-percent-asterisk.)

Navigate to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.exe

In the right-pane, set (default) to exefile

Exit the Registry Editor.


Now try to open an .exe file. guess it helps..:-)

How to start your Mac OS X in safe mode

To start up into Safe Mode (to Safe Boot), do this:

    Be sure your Mac is shut down.
    Press the power button.
    Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
    Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).

During startup in Mac OS X v10.4 or later, you will see "Safe Boot" on the login window, which appears even if you normally log in automatically. During startup in Mac OS X v10.2 through v10.3.9, you will see "Safe Boot" on the Mac OS X startup screen.

To leave Safe Mode, restart the computer normally, without holding any keys during startup.