Cannot Format C Drive "Not Ready"

I've decided to reformat my hard drive. At the C prompt I type format
c: the process begins and after about 5% completetion the formatting
stops and the computer states "Not Ready" Process treminated".

I decided to try this after my computer suddenly started taking about
30 minutes to boot up and my programs ran very slow. I ran antivirus,
scandisk and defrag (with some difficulty). They revealed nothing. I
even rebooted with some of my startup items turned off. My next
thought is to try to reinstall windows 98 over the existing copy. Does
anybody have any suggestions. HELP!

Sincerely,

Clifford Vann

CEV wrote in message
om...

I've decided to reformat my hard drive. At the C prompt I type format
c: the process begins and after about 5% completetion the formatting
stops and the computer states "Not Ready" Process treminated".

Looks like something has died in the hard drive subsystem,
drive, cable, controller or even the power supply connection.

I decided to try this after my computer suddenly
started taking about 30 minutes to boot up

Most likely because it was furiously retrying on drive read errors.

and my programs ran very slow. I ran antivirus, scandisk
and defrag (with some difficulty). They revealed nothing.
I even rebooted with some of my startup items turned off.

My next thought is to try to reinstall windows 98 over the
existing copy. Does anybody have any suggestions. HELP!

Get the diagnostic off the hard drive manufacturer's
web site and see what it says about the hard drive.