Getting a:\ to format on my gateway

try turning on your laptop in safe mode with command prompt by hitting f8 on startup,
try to check your your hard drive on typing "chkdsk" command. it will show the status of your hard drive. if it doesnt work theres problem with your hard drive

The same way you format any hard drive on your computer. Right click on it and select "Format".

Windows XP doesn't support SATA. You will need to use a program such as Nlite to integrate sata drivers into a new Windows XP disc. Once you have a disc with sata drivers just boot to the disc and follow the prompts to format the drive.

You can't format the active drive / partition within itself. It's like throwing away your clothes while you are wearing them in public. You just can't do it. Sorry, that's the only analogy that came to mind.

You format it with a boot disk like, an OS installation disc, USB drive with an OS installation, or a boot disc you found online (CD or USB).

If you have none of those, boot to command prompt by pressing F8 during boot. When you get there C:\ Type format c: Thats it. No going back, so make sure you saved and backed up your documents. You also need a way to install an OS, if you intend to do so.

Hi blainholdens,
You cannot delete everything on your hard drive if it is your main operating system drive. If you don't have a CD with which to install your operating system you will have to install the hard drive into another PC as a secondary drive, open 'My computer', right click on your hard drive and select the 'format' option from the drop-down menu.
Formatting the hard drive is effectively erasing all data from the disk and making it active and preparing it for starting new.

Best wishes,
Graemevm

check for a open sata port on your computer. if there is one connect the hard drive with a SATA cable to the sata port on the motherboard.
connect the sata power to the hard drive or a molex to the hard drive if you do not have one. do not connect sata and molex to the hard drive together. if you don't have a molex connect you will need a molex to sata power adapter.
after connecting the hard drive to your pc. turn it on. in windows xp it will auto detect the hard drive and may prompt you to format the hard drive.

Insert recovery disk and press any key when prompted on rebooting the fresh install/recovery will give option to format hard-drive

Removing the need to buy any additional software.

The Gateway Solo 2500 model computer accepts hard disk drives up to 6gb. The system is not able to correctly read and use a 40gb hard disk drive.

did you create a boot partition and format NTFS?

I've looked around, but can't find any single resource for drivers. What I ended up doing was use MvPcInfo to find what hardware was in the PC. Then, downloaded drivers from Intel.com, Realtek.com, etc. to get the PC going again. I realize that's not a great solution, but I don't think there are any better --- short of finding someone who has the original Gateway Restore CD.

I hope this helps!
Char1ieJ