Need to start HD over from scratch! 1

[spasekace]

Greetings to all,

for some inexplicable reason (me), i need to start my HD all over. i seem to have wrecked the thing due to some apparently destructive experimenting. its a 6.4gb laptop drive and i have a variety of OS's available that i can install, i just need to get at least 1 going and then i should be ok. i tried partitioning it (single partition with fdisk) and that seemed to work, but then i am unable to format it, i get this instead "invalid media type reading drive c. abort, retry etc...". anything i try to do on that drive give the same result. only thing i could find that was wrong was a missing volume label which i dont know how to add. any thoughts, suggestions, comments are GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks in Advance,
Spase

 

[dxd]

What version of Fdisk/Format are you using?
What file system(s) were previously installed?

Try, if you have it, using the Windows 98 versions...then run Fdisk and delete all partitions and make sure the size of free space equals the size of the drive. Restart and run the following command "fdisk /mbr".

Restart and run Fdisk once again, say yes to enable Large Drive support and then create your one primary partition using all the free space. Restart and try Format again.
Doug
dxd_2000@yahoo.com

 

[tlcscousin]

Could try fdisk again and make the partition active.Option two I think.

 

[spasekace]

Hi Guys,
Thanks for the quick respones. however my problem persists... in answer to your questions: fdisk is from win98 and i had win2k on it before i got adventurous. i was trying to do a clean install of winXP when it stopped behaving. anyway, i tried all suggestions but they unfortunately havn't worked. i get the same error message when i try to format. currently the HD has only 1 partition, the primary DOS @100% (left after trying the procedure you recommended) and it is still missing a volume label. over the course of the day my win98 startup disk seems to have developed problems, during the boot after selecting cdrom support i get error messages such as "missing or corrupt mode.com(sometimes with display.sys also)" or "missing or corrupt line 33(35 or 36 also sometimes)in config.sys" but it continues and i manage to get to the A:\. could that have something to do with it and if so can i make a new win98 disk on my other pc which is running win98? is there anyway to just start it all over from scratch? is there any software that i need to get to save my laptop?

again, thaks for taking the time to help me with my problems!!
spase.

 

[edfair]

Best to remove the partition assigned with the same fdisk that it was installed with. Or you could go back to a DOS version 6x and see if it will recognize it as an alien file system. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[osuman]

If you want to start from scratch you could try to find a zero fill utility from the HD manufacturer. (Although I don't think it's entirely necessary.) It's basically a small utility that writes zeros to every sector on the drive and thus wipes out all partitions, boot records, etc. making it the same as the day it came out of the factory. As for the volume not having a label, it's really not a problem. Volume labeling is just a way of keeping track of what's on that particular partition. Not having a label will not affect anything. Justin

Feel free to email me at:
beckham@mailbox.orst.edu

"3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population."

 

[dxd]

I would definitely create a new boot diskette...any computer running Windows 98 will do....who knows, your current diskette may even have a bootsector virus or the format or fdisk programs could be infected/corrupted.

If the boot disk approach still doesn't work and since you said you had a number of OS' to choose from...try to boot the W2K or NT4 CD and just go through the motions until the hard drive partition menu. Delete all partitions, create a partition, and format it with FAT (NT4) or FAT32 (W2K) and then just exit. Then try installing your OS of choice.
Doug
dxd_2000@yahoo.com

 

[dxd]

if you want a way to "zero" out the partitions, here is a copy of a post to another thread I provided some time ago...

"If all else fails, you may want to try and use debug to "zero" or clear the partition tables. Use this as a last resort.

Use FORMAT A: /S to create the system floppy diskette.
Copy DEBUG.COM, FDISK.COM, SYS.COM, FORMAT.COM.
Boot from the diskette, and enter DEBUG to start the debug
utility, and enter the following lines followed by the <ENTER> key:


F 200 L 200 0
a 100
mov ax,301
mov bx,200
mov cx,1
mov dx,0080 (Note: use 0081, 0082, 0083 for 2nd, 3rd, 4th harddisk respectively)
int 13
int 3
(hit ENTER to enter a blank line here)
G=100
q

This is a tidbit I picked up from the net not too long ago.&quot;

Doug
dxd_2000@yahoo.com

 

[jerry37]

I got the same error message when I tried to install a HD with windows 95 on my laptop. I had taken the HD out of a different laptop and simply plugged into mine. I thought that it might have been due to only 4mb of memory but that doesn't sound like your problem.

I had to boot the computer from a dos start up floppy and then I just formatted the hard drive. (Don't forget to add the /s switch in the format command if you want the system to boot from the hard drive.) a:\>format c:\ /s
That is the command. I also had to change the bios settings because of the different size of the new HD. Don't forget that. Your computer might not do that on it's own.
Good luck, Jerry