Reformatting an old hard drive, cannot fdisk

[LaserOption]

My wife and I got an old computer from a friend, as we no longer have ours. It's a 166mhz AMD K-5, and it has issues.

It is having some sort of hard disk error where it cannot get past the Windows loading screen. We cannot fdisk because it says there are no fixed disks present. We haven't access to another computer to do this from (I'm posting this from a home gaming console).

I'm looking for a way to reformat this hard drive and reload Windows 95, but for some reason it cannot get into the fdisk screen, and although all of the connections are present, it will not detect the hard drive. Any advice would be helpful.

-LO-

 

[JAFrank]

If it's a very old pc, and has been stored for a while, it is likely that the CMOS battery has died, which causes the system to lose all of it's saved BIOS settings when it is shut down. Things such as the system clock and hard drive parameters.

Can you get into the BIOS setup when you boot? If so, see if you can autodetect the hard drive. If it does, save & exit and see if fdisk will see the drive now. If it does, you may have some temporary luck with leaving the pc plugged in for several days to see if the battery will recharge. If not, you can either find a replacement battery at Radio Shack for 7 or 8 bucks, or just don't turn off the pc.

Good Luck!

JAF

 

[mudskipper]

JAFrank may be on to something here, but there are other possibilities as well.

To check the CMOS battery, go into CMOS setup and make sure that your time and date are correct. Now turn off the PC (or unplug it) for, oh let's say 5 minutes to be safe, then plug it in and turn it on. Go back into CMOS setup and see if your time and date are correct. If so, then your battery is good (very, very few exceptions to this).

First off, why do you say "hard drive error"? Is there a message that comes up, or is it just that it doesn't go past the "Starting Windows 95" screen? If the latter, read on....

Assuming that the time and date are correct, then try to boot again. Does it still say "starting windows 95"? If so, then it is reasonable to believe that the computer knows (in some fashion) that the hard drive is there.

Still assuming that the battery is fine, and now assuming that you get to the "starting..." screen, then I would guess that you have drive overlay installed on the hard drive. Drive overlay software that makes it easier for beginners to install hard drives, but it is also (usually) used to install a hard drive that your Motherboard doesn't natively support. If you don't boot up to a floppy correctly (usually you have to hold the CTRL key down) with drive overlay software installed, then FDISK will think that you have no hard drive.

As my post is already very long, I will stop here. If this seems to be the issue with your computer, please post back and we can go from here. Also, do you WANT to re-install? If you don't, then there are ways to see if we can get the current install working again. Mudskipper
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Groucho said it best- "A four year-old child could understand this! Quick! Run out and find me a four year-old child: I can't make heads nor tails out of this!"

 

[LaserOption]

Well, we tried to autodetect the hard drives (two of them), but neither one will detect in the bios screen. About the CMOS setup, I don't know how to get into the CMOS setup, so I don't know about that one.

What we did was try to start up the computer, then it said there was a hard drive error, press F1 to continue. So we did, and it began to load Windows. When it got to the windows loading screen, it began to simply cycle, but nothing more.

We tried this several times, and also tried going booting straight from the disk, but to no avail.

We pulled out an old hard drive of mine that was compatible, and we tried to start it up and fdisk the hard drive, but the autodetect didn't detect it. After several failed attempts at getting it to work, we decided to first reformat the old hard drve before reformatting the one I was about to put in. We put the original hard drive back into the computer, but now that hard drive was no longer detected, and every time we tried to fdisk, it told us that there were no fixed disks present.

Hope that helps. Thanks!

 

[firewolfrl]

You need to get to get into the BIOS.
What brand is it?

 

[jmatt]

http://www.techhowto.com/How_to/TuneUp/bios.php

http://www.pcmech.com/bios.htm

 

[lewat]

Lets be clear here from the beginning! fdisk is strictly a floppy -cold boot function.

Are you using a win 95 boot disk? Good/
When the screen gives a choice of of continuing or entering setup-You go to setup=That is your Bios/Cmos table! do not continue!

To help you get into table faster- look on your motherboard for a jumper -near the battery or cpu (on compaqs,dells.ibm) its behind the memory, "clearcmos"-Move that jumper-short the other 2 pins for 5 sec. put back to orig. pins. do this withsystem off.

Note If this is an IBM the ide controller is bad. Ypu need another MB.Also check cable--disconnect cd-rom-allowing only the hard drive to be connected.
post back for more info.