What does this imply within DOS?

Im trying to use DOS to format and when it say ''warning do u want to wipe your drive'' when i press Yes it says ''format canot be run beacause volume is within use by another process. ALL OPEN HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID. would you like to force dismount on this volume?'' i later type Yes and it says 'cannot lock drive volume is stil within use'



What is happening?

What does this imply within DOS?

you can't format a drive you are if truth be told logged into. you need to boot from a floppy and type format c:



you can't be on C: and format c:
You will enjoy to boot from a floppy or CD disk most expected. When Windows is running, it protects all accessible handles to the drive.
since your using window on your hard drive you cant use the dos prompt to delete and format.
Windows protects your nfts drive and locks it down so you cannot manufacture certain primary changes to the drive. Formatting is one of them.



Try using the Windows XP disc to format the drive.
Try this. Make a bootable cd, copy dos to it. Boot from the cd, then use the format command from the cd dos.

This may not be the merely way to do it but it should work.
You can't format the involved drive while Windows is still running on that drive. Use a boot diskette or installation cd and format from there.
Since the command prompt surrounded by windows is purely a program in window and not a seperate OS you wont be able to format your drive that approach. You need to step into the BIOS or use F-10 to do a one time boot from disk and then format that process.