Can't Reformat Part 2!

[monnie]

This is a long post but I really need help & would very much appreciate any help I can get. Ok first I should mention that I'm basically having the same problem that Coombs was having & the way I found this forum (which lead me to his thread: thread751-323799 by doing a search on "Trying to recover allocation unit" so I then registered to post here.

Starting from the top & reason why I just don't do what he did. I know this is a desktop forum but Coombs had the same problem I'm having it seems.

My brother brought me a Laptop Compaq Armada M300 Pent3 with Win2k Pro that wouldn't even boot to the desktop. It gave the error "Cannot find OS". I read that this can happen when the CMOS settings are wrong. So I tried booted it with a floppy but it wouldn't go to the desktop or anywhere. BTW There is no recovery disk. Someone suggested I use a Win98 floppy & go to doss to try & run the setup on Win2k Pro CD so I did that but doss responded with "Cannot run this in doss". Also like coombs at certain times I would get that buzzing noise he mentioned. Next I did fdisk & then my buddy told me I should clear mbr before reformating so he sent me a text file with the command sequence. It started ok but after typing the 4th command I got back a set of numbers that was different from the text I was following so I tried to input the next command anyhow but just got an error after that. Someone else told me that the cmr should have deleted when I did fdisk so I then proceeded to format using Format c: s/ & it started & just like coombs at about 20% came the error "Trying to recover allocation unit" so now I am stuck on what to do next as I cannot reformat due to this.

Coombs got some replys suggesting to do a low level format but I have no idea how to do that, would sys c: do it? Is that the exact command? Obviuosly you can tell I'm not so good at diagnosing & not so great at doss but that's why I really need help. I suspect this is not the original drive in the laptop as I believe it normally comes with an 8 or 10gig & it currently has a HDD2144 Model MK6014 Toshiba 2.5 drive. I have tried Toshiba support but they don't have any format install setup disks on their site. If it was a western digital drive I could use the setup disk I have like Coombs had to I believe do a low level format. SO can someone help me out please?

 

[wolluf]

I think IBM's Wipe & Zap utilities work on other drive types too (from another post - poster's drive manufacturer did not provide such a utility) -

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm#Wipe

(writes binary zeroes to whole drive - run fdisk /mbr when its complete, then try fdisking & formatting again - or rather boot from your win2k install CD, if you can - bios seetings may need changing so it boots from CD first - the install process includes partitioning & formatting tools).

 

[Wirdo]

Sounds like you may have errors on the disk. Boot to floppy and try runing scandisk on the drive see if can find and fix the problems. If it finds them and cant fix you might need to low level format or just junk the drive.

 

[monnie]

yes I forgot to mention that I also ran Scandisk but didn't find anything wrong including anything stating bad sectors (I wanted to see if it would tell me what sectors or how many were bad) but I still think there are bad sectors of course. So I will check out those utilitys wolluf.

 

[monnie]

Latest Update Got New Drive any help would be very much appreciated:

: ok after doing a low level format & also writing zeros to the hard drive & still getting errors I finally come to the conclusion that the hard drive is dead so I bought a new 10 gig drive & formated it with no problems but now I'm trying to install windows XP & I'm getting this error:

File \i386\ntkrnlmp.exe could not be found
ERROR Code 7

What is this? Do I have to install this file, looks like NT Kernal MP so what do I do & what commads do I do it with?

 

[wolluf]

at what point inthe install process are you getting that message?

problems reading files off the XP install CD often point to a HARDWARE problem (assuming CD/DVD drive ok & install disk not damaged).

 

[nightowl17]

I would do a lowlevel format you can get that at

http://www.maxtor.com

and look for power max down load it and copy it to a floppy and just follow instructions Hope This Helps Solve Your Problem
nightowl17

 

[monnie]

As I stated this is a brand new drive I just bought, (reffer to recent post) I already formated it with no problem, why would I need to do a low level format?

Wollof: This happened just before the installation was about to begin. The blue doss screen was up & ready to begin installation then I got that error. This error must be in a book somewhere but I'm an automotive tech not a PC tech but I do know enough to get me by. In automotive if we get an error code we look it up in a book & within 1min we know what is wrong with the car if the error code is correct according to the cars computer. Anyone know what error code 7 is?

 

[wolluf]

Monnie - you can try Google search on your error (and various subsets of it). I've just had a quick go & can't find anything conclusive various other error codes 1, 4, 14 as well as 7 and file cannot be loaded as well as not found. Unfortunately M$'s error codes are never as easy to decode as your car ones. I must admit I generally give up very quickly trying to debug error codes (once spent days chasing one down - but never found what was actually wrong or solution. That came when I started trying different hardware configurations).

What I would do in your position is try to install with as few components as possible (ie, no sound, newtwork or modem cards, one stick of memory if you have more than one - and if it fails, try others on own. If you've CD writer or zip drive, disconnect too). Also, I'd try slowing the cpu and memory speed down (if your bios supports this). If you actually get it to install, put things back to normal one thing at a time. Oh yeh - there's a couple of settings may be set in bios - antivirus - disable it if its there and enabled - S.M.A.R.T - same for that.

 

[monnie]

Thank you for the tips, I will give it another look today. After doing a bunch of searches I did come to something that said that Error Code 7 was a Ghost Floppy or a file unreadable or missing on a floppy or CD/disk damage. Other then that I got 3 different explanations on what code 7 means the others being subject of either Automotive Industry or some strange computer system but in other words nothing to do with actually what I'm doing. I will take a closer look at the hardware also like automotive, when you fail to track down the code you start switching parts as you recommended aswell.