cant reformat hard drive, HELP!!!

[Sharkadder]

Hello there i have stumbled on a very perculiar problem, i say im quite good with computers and even the likes on my cannot find a way around the problem, i have explained below the problem in detail.

I currently own a gericom laptop, the total disc space in it is 80GB, i used up about 40GB and then my computer messed up so i reinstalled windows, however i could not delete the remaining partitioned space, i thought nothing of it and thought to myself well 40GB will take me a while to use up but now i have used up 72GB of space out of the 80GB allocated in my drive.

I wanted to delete the 1st 40GB (the other account i created) but all i get is access denied to i thought ok im just going to reformat, i have put all my files onto DVD and i want to reformat the hard drive from scratch but thats where the problem comes in.

I insert the windows XP disc and go through the steps until i get to the delete partition bit and it says "cannot delete partition" i try to create a new partition but nothing happens, i can create another copy of windows on old partition but that isnt what i want.

I then got hold of a copy of "powerquest partition magic" and when i go to create a new partition with that it still wont let me.

I am on a 4month old laptop and it did not come with a floppy drive to the boot disc option is not currently a possibility, how can i do this?

I am really stumbled i am using a copy of windows XP professional, NTFS file format and i dont know how i can reformat the drive.

I once managed to exit the windows installation and somehow got into dos, i remember from my old dos days you typed mount then the drive letter but it would not have it, still didnt work.

If anybody can help me it would be great as im desperate to start from the beginning.

thanks, mark

[snooker]

Hi ... I'm curious to know , Is your Windows xp disk a Microsoft genuine disk , Or a product recovery disk ?