How do you Format a RAW USB Flash Drive under WinXP

During a new install of WinXP Pro I deleted all partitions seen in WinXP
partition manager which unfortunately included my 128Mb USB Flash Drive which
was still left plugged in after collecting drivers etc prior to install. The
problem is now I have a flash drive which is RAW and WinXP cannot format it
and FDISK of course does not work with WinXP. When I try to format in DOS I
get the message
"Cannot determine the number of sectors on this volume."
Can anyone tell me the number of Tracks and Sectors I should specify using
DOS Format for a 128Mb USB flash drive or point me in the right direction if
this is incorrect.

Go to Windows explorer, right click on the drive and select Format. This
worked for my USB drive.

That was the first thing I tried JW but I get the message "Windows was unable
to complete the format" WinXP sees the drive as FAT and unknown capacity but
in DOS it is in RAW as the partition was deleted by WinXP partition manager.
Is there a tool available (DOS or WinXP) that allows you to re-format a USB
flash drive. I cannot find one anywhere and in the good old days this would
have been simple using FDisk as long as your BIOS had USB supported drives.
Why MS decided to make partition manager only accessable on a new
installation is beyond me and do away with FDisk all together with WinXP.

Got an old dos system floppy or Windows 95/98 start-up disk? Any of those
should work. You can also find boot disk utilities on the net and make one
to use to format your usb stick.

I've reformatted some and never had the problem you describe. What happens
when you look at the usb drive in the Computer Services MMC (Administrative
Tools, Computer Services)? I see them under Disk Managment which gives me
options to partion and format.

How can we know what you are so happy about?

You clipped the whole message.
You should always quote the message you are replying to.

[Mattmattmatty]

WOW!!! WOW!!!! I would like to Thank you Cheryl Wise this has really really helped me out alot to fix this problem i was having with my Pearl Drive Your Suggestion using the component management fixed the drive after i added a partion and formated the drive.

ManyMany Thanks for this program worked a treat with my 4gb sony drive i accidently killed when adding windows xp to my laptop

That's lovely, has nothing to do with Media Center though.

[sadistic angel]

thought i would post a solution here that i found.
1.go to the start menu
2.right click "My Computer"
3.click manage
4.click "Disk Management"
5.add a simple partition to the flash drive
6.if you receive an error but the partition stays. format the drive as you usualy would

problem solved!

[russco1932]

Thanks Sadistic Angel. Tried everything else. This fixed it.
You're a Hero.