hi carl downloaded the file delpart,how do i use it,at this point i am not over confident i will get this right as i have not had any expirance with fdisk as the options have never been avalible to use due to an error message of one sort or another also on the web site it made no mention of windows se ,"(Here's a partitioning tool useful when you need to clear NTFS partitions from NT or W2K drives and reinstall Windows 95/98/Millennium.)" i think i will be ok with running the delpart but what happens afer that as the computer i am trying to fix is this one and if i get stuck i may not be able to get back here to this forum You think computers are hard to understand try building a sail boat with out plans.

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Try this link it should help. http://www.hexff.com/w98_hd.php axel

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Go to my website (follow the Homepage link). First - Look up the link on "Partition Removal Information". This will explain to you how to use delpart. It will also show you other ways of deleting partitions. Second - Look up the link on "Fdisk and Format Procedure for Windows 98". This gives you a step by step guide on how to partition (fdisk) and format your hard drive ready for installing Windows 98SE. Hope it helps. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

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Fdisk/status (the space is optional) doesn't always give the info you need. Run fdisk again, Y to large disk support, then option 4. EXACTLY what does it say.

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hi to daveincaps and thanks to everyone else, I'm on uk time here so there is a reason for this late reply, In answer to daves Q fdisk say's Current Fixed disk drives: 1 Partition C:1 Status A Type PRI DOS Volume lable ( blank ) Mbytes 32248 System FAT 32 Usage 100% Total disk space is 32248 mbytes (1mbyte =1048576 bytes) hope this helps ,I have tried options 1,2 and 3 in f disk but like I said before it wont let me do much in terms of deleating what appears not to be there in the first place Perhaps if I gave you all some more back ground info it might help you all, So at the risk of confusing everyone, here go's, This pc in its original state was a Tiny 650mhz Pentium 3 with 27gig hdd 128mb ram, upgraded to 256mb ram 2 years ago then late last year the original hdd developed bad sectors and started to fail on boot up , This original hdd was a fugitsu and I always used the original manufactures (TINY) floppy and cd to format this drive when nessasery ,as I said in my first post this drive lost total space with every format, but i was not to botherd as after about 2 years and a number of formats the total space in windows and dos was still around 25 gig. I hope you are all still with me on this ! Now then ,I went out and bought a 40 gig Maxtor hdd ,to replace the fugisu, I installed it formted it every thing was fine, reporting in windows as 40 gig total free space, the deamons of msn,various viruses ,cookies etc caused the need to reformat the drive,a friend of mine told me about maxblast 3 which is suppossed to write 0's to all the drive,this we used and found the pc regaind it original perfomance,since then I had to reformat the drive again this time I used the original floppy and cd as supplied by TINY ,the floppy contains norton ghost and the cd contains wni98se plus other bits, let me tell you the floppy when inserted just takes over and gives you no options for partitions and any you may have created just dissapear,the cd runs next and installs win 98se, this is all fine except,now the total free space is 30.5gb and capacity is 31.4gb so I redid the format no change ???? so I came here for so expert help, many thanks to those of you that read this far,any replys would be appreciated, Charlie You think computers are hard to understand try building a sail boat with out plans.

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Charlie, it sounds like the floppy/CD combo is a recovery disk, rather than a regular bootdisk & OEM Windows CD. The recovery CD is probably resetting (incorrectly) the HD settings in the BIOS, so the HD is being incorrectly identified. Try entering the BIOS & see how the HD is being identified. If there is an AUTO(detect), change it to that, then save changes>exit & reboot. See if Windows correctly identifies the HD now. HTH Dave The word 'politics' is made up of the words 'poli' meaning 'many' in Latin, and 'tics' as in 'bloodsucking creatures’

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Fdisk believes you only have a 32 gig drive. I can think of three possible reasons for this: It's misidentified in cmos. It's jumpered with a cylinder limiting jumper that causes it to be seen as 32 gig. Normally that jumper would be used if the bios isn't seeing the drive. If the jumper is needed then the person would normally install a drive overlay to be able to access the entire drive. There is a 32 gig bios barrier for some older Award bios' dated before 6/99. If that's the case you may be able to get a bios upgrade.

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In the original post, you stated that: >p.s it used to report 40 gig with 38/9 gig free at first boot when new This leads me to believe that the problem lies with the recovery CD causing the HD to be mis-identified by the BIOS, as referred to in response #12. Have you tried the suggested remedy? Dave

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The problem is, a 40GB Hard Drive is NEVER really 40 gig. It's actually an estimated value. It's the same with all newer hard drives from like 20gig and up. It's kind of a rip off, but the manufacturs are making money.

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