I can't format partition...

Hi there,
I have Win XP Pro on my comp. Originaly I had WD400BB hard drive on comp partitioned to 4 parts. Every partition was used and I decided to enlarge HDD capacity by adding WD800BB drive. I installed new HDD into comp, partitioned it, formatted one partition and moved all data from old drive to new. Then I decided to repartition old drive and did so. Everything went OK, until I tried to format last partition on old drive. WinXP says Unknown drive error and freeze. Only hard reset works, but BIOS can't find any hard drives on comp after hard restart. So I have to powerdown and powerup the comp. Then everything is OK until next try to format that partition. I tried to format it to NTFS and FAT32, but nothing works.
Anybody knows, what to do?

The comp is:
Gigabyte 7vax1394 mobo
Athlon XP 1800+
1024MB 333MHz CL2 DDR
WD 400BB - 40GB disk
WD 800BB - 80GB disk
TEAC CDW540E burner
LiteOn 163 DVD ROM
 
Only thing I could think of is to make the 80GB the master and the 40GB the slave. My guess is that when you are booting up its booting up the 40gb and not the 80gb. It won't let you format the pagefile while it's in use. This is just a guess. I may be wrong, but it doesn't hurt to try.
 
Nunyobiznes said:
Only thing I could think of is to make the 80GB the master and the 40GB the slave. My guess is that when you are booting up its booting up the 40gb and not the 80gb. It won't let you format the pagefile while it's in use. This is just a guess. I may be wrong, but it doesn't hurt to try.
Yes..and also makes sure that you have the right Harddrive set in the bios as the boot drive...then if that don't work...I suggest...as above..make the new drive the Master...the old drive the Slave..then low level format the old drive..and use Partitation Magic
 
Thanx folks.
i tried to repartition through Linux, but it doesn't work. Then I simply disconnect new drive and format went OK. I have already copied all content back and that partition seems to work fine, even after reconnecting the new drive.
So, the problem wasn't in paging nor booting. When you are trying to format System partition or paging partition, Windows simply say, that you can't do it. But the problem was elsewhere. If anybody knows, what can it be, please inform me about that.
 
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