Weird Formatting Problems..

I have a 40GB Maxtor hard drive that had Windows 98 on it. I wanted to reinstall since Windows had been giving me a lot of illegal operation. I booted up to a command prompt deleted my partitions, set the logical dos drives, etc.

I Fdisked because I wanted a different set up on my partitions.

So anyway after creating the partitions I reboot the computer get to the a: command prompt and try to format the C: drive. The computer then tells me that its a invalid command. Also when I go to the C: prompt and type the dir command it tells me invalid media.

When I swithc my prompt to the c: drive and type dir it says that I have 5 files. All of these files are taking up all of my space on the hard drive, and the names are like in Machine Language. THeres a Smiley Face then a Weird looking y etc.

I Think that it might be a virus and ran a boot disk from NOrton on it but Norton said that my Hard Drive is invalid. I have no idea on how to clean out this virus or remove those files. It won't let me delete them. It says access is denied.

Anyway If I can't get it working I'm gonna use the HD for target practice.

Any suggestions on what to do?

It might be time for the old format c:


Cheers:

What you have done, can be compared to sawing off a branch you're sitting on yourself (if that makes sense): by re-partitioning your hard drive, you've lost all data on it, the format-program included. All you need is a format-program from another media (I suppose you have a windows-CD? Try formatting your drives from the CD)...

Yeah I knew what I was doing when I selected to format. I first tried the format from the WIndows 98cd but it says setup has encounterd an error, or it tells me to put my 98 cd in the logical dos drive which is drive d:, Cd rom drives are E:, and F:, and press enter. The cd is already in the drive but it keeps telling me that it needs it. :(

So I'm still stuck. :( I just cant figure out how to get rid of those files. I wonder if it would work if I set the dirve as slave and booted up to another computer and tried something from there.

You might want to check HERE first. You may be able to find a bootdisk that will help you out.

Cheers:

Download the diagnostic tools and the low - level format program from Maxtor's web site
Http://www.maxtor.com. These are Maxplus II and Powermax. The low-level format program is self booting and will return your HD to manufacturer's original state

All above sugestions and advice are valid but i would like you to just check one other thing
Enter the bios and check if you have the boot sector antivirus selected,if it is selected i think we may have found your problem. deselect that option and reboot using your 98 cd or a 98 boot disk.
I hope this helps
Regards
Mike