I have had a strange thing happen. I was trying to partition a hard drive that our family had been using, and that was working extremely well. It is in an IBM Thinkpad 755C and is an 810mb hard drive. I was trying to set up a disk partition so that I would have an small D drive to transfer Windows 98 onto so I could install it on the D drive. I had used fdisk to set up the partition, and then formatted the drive, and found that there was no D drive. So I went to do it again, and saw the note that I had to shut off the computer and restart it after setting up the D partition and before formatting. I did that, and on the restart I got a bios error (keyboard error due to the fact that my trackpoint mouse didn't work, and had to go through setup, which I did, but I had to restart the computer and since then it will not even go to dos with the hard drive installed. The bios recognizes the hard drive and it tests as being ok in bios. But when I try to get to the A prompt, the computer just runs and runs and I can tell that the hard drive is running. So I removed the hard drive and restarted it, and I was able to get to the A prompt in dos, BUT since the hard drive was not installed when I booted, I cannot run Fdisk and get the message that "No fixed disks present". I suspect that this is due to the fact that I removed the hard drive so the bios will not recognize it as being there. But if I insall the hard drive at boot up, the hard drive runs and runs and doesn't boot. I have tried changing the boot sequence in the bios. I have even tried removing all boot devices except for the 3.5" drive and still the same thing happens....it runs and runs the hard drive but won't go to the dos prompt. The hard drive was working fine until I did this. Any suggestions?

FDisk is a very destructive tool. Improper use of this utility usually results in the total loss of all data. You were warned, right? i_XpUser

Fdisk always results in the loss of the data...you have to format your drive after using it! I am not worried about the loss of data....that was all backed up. I wish to get the computer running again and can't.

I don't see how running Fdisk can actually damage an HDD. I could be wrong but the state of your HDD should have no bearing on whether your comp will boot from a floppy. Your boot disk could be damaged. I would use another computer to obtain a new boot disk as my first port of call. Better still download the manufacturers setup utility and burn to CD. They are much more user friendly.

I have tried several boot disks....all windows 98. When I start the computer, it does the memory check fine, then the little horizontal curser blinks. If the hard drive is installed, both the hard drive and the 3.5" drive seem to run (I can hear both of them and the light is on on the 3.5" drive). If I remove the hard drive, I get an A prompt. I have no tried another partitioning program, and it also does not find my hard drive. Given the fact that this hard drive worked fine, I am stumped. How can I get the software to recognize the harddrive? Also, I do not have a CD drive in this computer, and any setup disks are no longer available from IBM.

There is probably a hidden partition containing the system restore files at the front of the drive. Boot to the BIOS and verify you have the floppy set as the first boot device. Then if you can't access the drive using Fdisk try running Killdisk. It will wipe all partitions from the drive, including any hidden restore partitions. Don't use it if you don't want that to happen. Let us see if we understand what you were attempting to do. You were trying to use Fdisk to create an additional partition on the internal Harddrive that had only one partition. If this is correct, that is your problem. Fdisk cannot perform a nondestructive reconfiguration of the partitions. Fdisk can only delete your partition and then create new partition/s. When doing this you MUST reboot after creating a new partition, before attempting to format. If this is incorrect, give a detailed explanation of what you did do and what you want to do.

Thanks and sorry to be so long in getting back on this. I had a hard drive that was working fine, but it had no partition. f I wanted to set up a "D" drive to store data that I did not want to delete in case I wanted to delete all of the other data...basically D drive was to store my Windows 98 Setup information. I ran Fdisk set up the partitions, but did NOT restart the computer...then I ran format, but it only formatted the C drive without creating a D drive. So I started again and ran Fdisk and set up the partitions that I wanted to. Then I restarted the computer to format the Drive, but I had a bios error due to the cmos battery dying. I never got to format the drive so it is sitting their Fdisked and unresponsive. I have never heard of killdisk.