Ok, so im not sure if this belongs in a Windows forum or in a Linux forum. You will see why.

I had a 40gb hard drive installed on my Compaq laptop and it was completely formatted to fit only Linux (no dual boots). It was formatted as ext3. I took out the hard drive and purchased an enclosure for it. Now, what Im trying to do is format this hard drive into a fat32, so that I can access/write it with my Windows and Ubuntu boots on my other laptop.

When I plug the hard drive in Windows, I get the baloon in the taskbar stating that if found an "IDE to USB Device", but it says that it cant be installed and therefore it "might not work properly." Im assuming thats for the reason that Windows cant mount any ext filesystems. When I plug it in my ubuntu, nothing happens.

So Id really appreciate anyone that can tell me how I can completely format this hard drive into a fat32.

Thanks a bunch!

Well, mkfs.vfat will create a fat partition, however I'm pretty sure linux has problem 'formatting' or making partitions on external hard drives. I would recommend formatting the drive to fat32 in windows.

Thanks for your interest. But how would I go about formatting it in Windows? The moment I plug it into my USB the Windows taskbar says "IDE to USB Device Found" followed by "Your device couldnt be installed and therefore might not work properly"; Im assuming I get this message because Windows doesnt work with ext3 filesystems. How can I work around it so that I can format this hard drive into fat32, via Windows or Linux?

Try fdisk to delete/recreate the partition so it's no longer ext3. (fdisk works in both MS and Linux, although the implimentation is different.)