Trying to clear hard drive and start over 1

[slider23]

I'm working on an older PC that has a 4.3GB hard drive. I'm just trying to clear the drive and load Windows 98SE.

So far, I've booted to a Win98SE floppy and used fdisk to delete all partitions that were previously on the drive. Then, I restarted the system and went back into fdisk to create a new partition. However, now it only shows 475MB available.

What did I do wrong? I have a set of Partition Magic boot disks that I've used, but the program also only sees the 475MB of space. Scandisk and chkdsk didn't help either. It's reporting 1,024 cylinders in 63 sects.

Thanks for your help,
slider

 

[slider23]

Here's a quick update...

I've tried using fdisk /mbr, but it doesn't make a difference. For some reason, it's stuck on a 1,024 cylinder count. Any ideas out there? I've tried searching through the forums, but I have yet to find an answer.

 

[Peahippo]

Yank out the hard disk drive, find the identifiers (manufacturer, model, heads, cylinders, sectors) and get back to us with them. We can all surf for the specs.

 

[edfair]

Sounds like you are dealing with a BIOS limitation.
How do you set the drive size in BIOS. And does the system allow autodetect?
And can you set the drive to LBA?

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[slider23]

Is there another way or something else I can try first?

The reason I do not want to remove the hard drive, is because of the way it's mounted. This is a Packard Bell (believe it or not), which has a proprietary configuration where the hard drive is "vertically" secured in a bracket that has 2 screws that are hard to reach due to the position of the motherboard which is laying flat at the bottom of the case.

Any other ideas?

 

[slider23]

Thanks Ed, I guess we were posting at the same time. Let me check and get back to you...

 

[edfair]

Sounds like you need a screwstarter. Luckily the PB drive I just pulled had a 1 screw bracket and slide mounts.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[slider23]

Ed,
Turns out that one small BIOS setting was throwing it off. I've been doing this for several years now, but for some reason, didn't even think to re-check the hard drive settings in the BIOS when the system was working fine recently. Plus, the BIOS was reporting all 8800+ cylinders.

There was an IDE translation setting selected called "Standard CHS" and the other options were "Logical" or "Auto-Detect". After setting it to Auto-Detect, all 8800+ cyclinders showed up in fdisk.

Thanks for jogging my memory over such a simple issue!!