PC has 10 gigs But only recognises 2 gig

[xandroid]

I have a 8 gig system. Started out on Win 95. Have lived through upgrades to several winme installs. Don't ask me what happened to the PC. Near as I can tell my entire C:windows\system dir disappeared. It was as if I had a head crash. I some how managed to get winme to load again after 50 attempts. Lost all the files. But the system only recognizes 2.0 gigabytes. That's not a lot of room to be running much under winme. I think it might have to do with dos. I don't know/ I was thinking of getting something like Partition Magic to see if it could fix it. I remember hearing one time what was special about addressing the first 2 gig but zi can't recall ot find it. I also lost the drivers to all my audio. I don't know if that is related. I could use the help. I need a safe method.

I have a sony vaio PCV E314DS desktop 400 mhz pentium processor, 192 mb ram, 512 cache, 10 gigs

Now I never used any kind of partitioning tool or tried to create partitions. this is the way the system came up from scratch. I was just looking at the system information and I notice it recognizes 10 gigs of disk. It says there are three partitions. Partition 0 and 1 are allocated 5 gigs each and partition 2 is allocated 2 gigs. When you look up the drives it only shows onw the c: drive with 2 gigs except for the CDROM drive and the Zip 100 drive and the A: floppy drive.
I only have 42 mb of spare disk. I have already stripped the PC pretty bare. I don't have partition majic on it. I have the restore option turned off and the disk usage at the lowest on WinME. There is about 380 mge of useless recovery disk stuff that I can't delete. If I could delete that It would help.

Thanks

Andy

 

[wolluf]

Very confusing post. Do you know about fdisk? (run from dos prompt & see what it says about the two 5GB partitions). I don't really understand what you've done or how you got where you are. You say 'I have an 8GB system' - but then say drive is 10GB! Then you have 3 partitions that add up to 12GB. But you've only got access to 2GB!!!

You've been having crashes - which might mean you have other hardware problems.

Suggestion (because your system sounds a complete mess)

1. Backup all your critical data settings etc (you've got a zip drive) - prepare for cclean install of ME. Make sure you have any necessary drivers saved also.
2. Boot from a winME boot floppy (assuming that's your operating system now), and run fdisk (enable large disk support). Use its delete function to remove all the existing partitions (yes, want to wipe the drive). The first 2 may show as non-dos - but it should still remove them. If it doesn't, try this utility instead

http://www.lpacomputers.telinco.co.uk/PD.zip.

When all removed, create a new fat32 partition using the whole disk (10GB?). Exit fdisk, reboot to winME floppy (with ME install disk in the drive). Format the drive, and run ME setup.
3. Reinstall software & restore data settings etc.
4. If you have any problems with any of this, or want to continue with your current setup (and can it better), please post back.

PS. What system information tool gives you information about your 2 5GB partitions in ME?

 

[xandroid]

I do not use this system. It was my son's old system before he got his laptop. I am just looking into it because my wife uses it and was getting messages about low disk space. I originally thought it had 8 gig but found out it had 10, I thought I had changed all the references to 8. Guess I missed one.

The system is in good working order. Winme is working remarkably well dispite the low amount of disk for temporary work. We do not experience crashes, never. There was a crash and we have no idea why. We thought it was a virus, then it seemed to me more like a disk crash, then it seemed as if the system directory got wiped out. We could not recover the data. The system as it is with the 3 partitions of 5 5 and 2 is the direct result of a clean install of me. From a disk formatted Unconditional. My wife doesn't know enought to do any harm such as this nor would she try to create partitions, she knows nothing about this stuff. This the result of the clean install. I don't believe it myself, for there is nothing clean about having the disk configured like that.

Where can you find this information. Go to Accessories/system tools/system information the look under the disk area there will be several choices like drives, IDE, disks, scsi etc.

tith an easier solution. You did not mentioned anything about the hang up systems of this vintage had with the first 2 gigabytes. I think that's wherethe answer lies. I am trying to avoid your solution.

Tell me, how can I delete the system recovery files? It won't let me. It won't let me chane there attributes, or rename them either. I can't delete individual files or directories. I can't even delete file that no program is using. I could not delete them or the directories in DOS, or erase them. If I could I would have the space to install a disk utility, or partitioning software.

I certainly do appreciate you taking the time to respond, thanks, sincerely.

I might give the fDisk utility a go from a floppy after I get to back things up.

Andy

 

[xandroid]

I have found this out. It is the 2 gig limit issue I spoke of vaguely remembering. Next Question is can I fix it with data out there? And How?

FAT can store no more than 2 gigabytes of data in each partition of a hard drive.

FAT32 (File Allocation Table) will work on hard-drives up to 20 gig. with only one primary partition. If a computer only sees 2-gig, that is related to having an older bios, which can be corrected with software or possibly by flashing the bios on certain models.

Does this help anyone to find me an answer.

If I need a newer Bios how comw the PC worked with the 10 gig from the begining? I seem to remember a workaround used to get over the 2 gig thing and I bet this isn't present in the WinME install and so with the old bios I am left with the problem. Sony is not very good about support on such an old PC. There like Microsoft - Impossible to get to a human being. They presume their web site can answer all situations. Poor assumption but they just don't care a about an individual person.

 

[wolluf]

Andy,

Sorry, but I'm just more confused. I didn't mention the 2gb fat restriction, because you appear to have 2 other 5GB partitions (I'm still dubious about this - please run fdisk from a dos box and use its display partition details to see what's on the disk). FAT32 can do far more than 20GB. Computer seeing only 2GB could be a pretty old bios (its one of the bios limiting values, like 528MB, 8Gb & 32GB), but you say yours can see all 10 anyway.

There's no way a 'standard' install of ME will install it on a 2GB partition at the end of a 10GB with two 5GB?! partitions at the start of the disk. If you can really see two 5GB partitions from system information, what does it say about them?

I suspect that what you have is a 2GB FAT parition at the start of the disk with ME on (because if you run fdisk without large disk support when setting up partition to install ME into, that's what it will create). I also suspect that you have 8GB of unallocated space. If this is so - and running fdisk will TELL you, you can create an extended partition in this space and allocate it to one or maore logical drives. You can then move files off C: and into this area. If you use this space to install into, you should have no serious space problems on C:. If you wantt o merge this space with C: drive, you'll need someting like Partition Magic. All assuming my suspicions are correct. If they are not, please post back with fdisl details.

 

[DallasKelsey]

If your partition is a FAT one, you really need to convert it to FAT32. Actually, you really need to scrap Me and get a better OS to run with, even backpedaling to 98SE would be a better choice in my opinion, but that's for another thread. There should be a built-in Fat to Fat32 Drive Converter utility in your Startrogram Files:Accessories:System Tools folder (I think--not terribly familiar with Me).

Convert your drive to FAT32 and it will not only be capable of holding more than 2Gb, but will be faster, more reliable, and make more efficient use of whatever drive space it CAN access and store data on.

Another thought is that you could possibly benefit from acquiring a copy of Partition Magic--if you are in the Windows 9x world you would easily be able to get buy with an older copy of partition magic as the newer ones sell at higher prices only to add flashier graphics and accomodate more recent renditions of Microsoft OS's and such.

Partition magic is FDisk on steroids, and can also convert your drives to Fat32 for you. It will reveal almost anything you may want to know about your physical drive information. Even if your BIOS is current enough that it can address partitions larger than 2 Gb, you still need to use a file system other than FAT (which really is FAT16). I don't know why anyone would want to use FAT16 anymore, but I'm sure there's a reason somewhere. However, if you don't have one, never ever ever use FAT (i.e., Fat16) as your file system--always use at least FAT32. It is comfortable with much larger disk partitions and has a number of other enhancements over older files systems.

It also struck me, since a virus was suspected at some point in this thread, that if your system files "disappeared", it could very well have been a destructive virus as there are a few out there whose payload is just that--they sneak into your system, escape notice, then do some dastardly thing like deleting all your *.dll's or wiping your system folder clean. It would behoove you to acquire some virus scanning software for any/all machines that access the 'net or have foreign files introduced unless rebuilding systems is something you enjoy doing regularly Dallas S. Kelsey, III
DKelsey@CHGLaw.com
Cox, Hodgman, & Giarmarco, P.C.
Troy MI 48084

 

[xandroid]

Rats, I typed in a substancial post an I don't know what happened, I either hit a bad key or I went back in time and my post is gone and I had to sign back in. I swear one of these days I'm going to go back to Macintosh.

I was thanking all of you for your contribution and devoting time to help me. appreciate it, I really do. I tell you the truth. It is a strange thing to me as well. I can't believe what I see. One thing to note however that I did not mention, I think, and that is that only the 2 gig partition has a drive letter assigned to it. Only the 2 gigs shows up when you use any software like explorer or do a systems information inquiry as I outlined and look at the drives. It is when you look at the disk or ide that you can see that 10 gig is displayed as the total space and you the the partition information. Does this help?

I am baffled as to just where this partitioning specifications came from. I mean we only had a C and a D drive before that one event I mentioned. And I did a
format unconditional on the drive. Oh it was the event that left the system with just one partition, one drive letter, namely C: I wonder more and more if it was not some type of virus. It sure hit with devestation.

I have orders from a higher authority to cool it on the system until she gets the income tax done and the kids financial aid applications. So I am rather limited from tinkering or experimenting to sort out more information. There is still some things I can check. I agree about putting Win98 out there, I have no trouble with that. It is unbelieveable to me how well WinME is running in the enviroment. It is all in the 2 gigs, doesn't that kill you. My understanding is that WinME usually needs about 2 gig worth of free space just to operate. I do have a secret program that makes WinME work like a kitten, but amazingly I notice it is not running in the environment. It's installed but not running. It fixes all the memory leaks and some other stuff. No kidding, I put some friends on to it and they went from the all to well known WinME troubled operations to smooth sailing. It does the same thing for Win98. I run it under XP but XP appears to run fine even with out it, so you don't gain much except for defraging memory and reclaiming it. It is called Memory Zapper. It was written by some talented folks. It would cost you around $15. You can find it on

http://www.shareit.com

it was created by Shrishail Rana.

I do have a copy of partition magic on a different machine. but it takes 23 meg just to support it let alone run it.

I wish I knew a way of deleting the files in the _Recovery dir. That would give me about 380+ meg to work with. The data is worthless because recovery has been turned off for so long and the disk allocation is set to the lowest, still it contains the 380+ meg which I can't delete, can't change the attributes.

I like the idea of seeing what partition magic would say about it all.

I am getting the feeling like even if it can be fixed that starting again clean might be best in the long run.

Cheers! and thanks again.

 

[DallasKelsey]

You don't need 27 Mb to run Partition Magic!!

To install it, yes--but not to run it. Create the floppy disks and run it from them. I think it takes two or one, depending on what version you have.

Also, what is your Windows Me file system? It sounds like it is FAT (i.e., FAT16). To determine this, open Windows Explorer, expand My Computer, right-click on the system partition (most likely "C:\&quot, and select Properties. One of the attributes of the drive should be File System, and that tells you the format type of your drive.

If it is FAT16, then you can slap a 200Gb+ drive in there and still only have 2 GB of addressable disk space. FAT16 just cannot see anything more. But as soon as you convert to FAT32, you should see that all your drive space is available. This can be done with or without Partition Magic--Partition Magic is just a way more capable tool than FDisk.

And for what it's worth--going to a Macintosh will not correct unlucky keystroke problems But i know the frustration of deleting a lengthy post just before submitting it. It does make you wonder seriously if PCs can fly, even though they have no wings. Dallas S. Kelsey, III
DKelsey@CHGLaw.com
Cox, Hodgman, & Giarmarco, P.C.
Troy MI 48084

 

[wolluf]

DallasKelsey

What are you saying? 'But as soon as you convert to FAT32, you should see that all your drive space is available' No you won't - it will just convert a 2GB FAT16 partition into a 2GB FAT32 partition. Yes, you can then use partition magic (if you have it) to extend that partition, but it doesn't happen by converting (though you will have more free space in the 2GB as files will take up less space).

Andy,

You still haven't posted what fdisk's 'view partition details' shows - so I've still no real idea of what's on you hard drive (other than a 2GB partition and indeterminate other 8 (10?) GB). Also, ME needs about 500-600MB - so will run quite happily in 2GB (with nothing too big in partition obviously), with system restore turned off (if you turn it off, the current restore points - most of that 380MB - will be removed). You can turn it off in system properties.

 

[DallasKelsey]

Correct. The conversion alone will not add the extra spaced to your partition. But you cannot do anything until you make the file system one that can handle a larger partition. That was my error. Dallas S. Kelsey, III
DKelsey@CHGLaw.com
Cox, Hodgman, & Giarmarco, P.C.
Troy MI 48084

 

[xandroid]

I will get more info tomorrow on the PC and disk and file types. I can't run certain things and risk having a problem since my wife is using it to do taxes, quicken and finanical aid. Once she is finished I can back everything up and even reformat the drive and do a cold start.

I find out all I can tomorrow. It may not be until tomorrow afternoon guys, I'm looking for a job and have sone things to tend to.

Again, I am most impressed with you all, sorry I can't run certain things just yet, that's for baring with me on that.
what can I say but thanks, I'm impressed with this forum.

One thing I wish I knew how to do was delete that data in the _recovery directory. That would give some needed space.
Does any one know how to do that?

Cheers,

Xandroid the Magnificent
Ruler of all non particle and non wave.
Today's wisdon: Never let Reality get in the way.

 

[wolluf]

Xandroid,

My last post mentioned turning off (disabling) system restore (which uses _recovery to save restore points) - from system properties. If you do this, it will remove existing restore points - which will account for most of that 380MB. If you don't want system restore disabled, you can turn it back on again, and it will start creating restore points again (and filling up space of course).