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I am in the process of reformating an old computer. It is a old 133 with a 15 gb hard drive. I am tring to set it up for the kids. I used a bootdisk program called Ultimate boot disk to help with the install. It had an option to format your drive. I used it. It messed the drive up. The windows 98 disk wouldn't even rocognize the HD. I put it in slave mode and hooked it up to another computer. It is showing 2 drive letters for it. Now I have a 1.56 gb usuable area drive and a second drive that I can't even access. How can I repair this. Partitionmagic 8.0 doesn't even recognize the non-usuable drive.
Delpart should be able to blow the partitions away, but are you sure the BIOS on the P(?)133 will see the entire 15GB (without a disk manager)?...
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What make/model computer or motherboard. You need to know the BIOS limitations, if any, for the hard drive. How does the BIOS show the drive?
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Boot up with a regular old 98 bootdisk. At the prompt type fdisk and enter. Y to large disk support. Then option 4. Exactly what does it say?
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u can also try power quest partition magic if u have it. its very easy to use for beginners & powerful too.
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Answering posts 5 & 6 will provide the best information to determine what to do next.
It's a good day when you learn something
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Nice one Dan. Always best to get the info, find out what the problem really is, then attempt a solution (in that order).
DerekW
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Sorry for the lack of details. The drive is the original drive that came with the computer so I know that works with the bios. The bootdisk I used just did a number on the drive. I didn't have time to work on it today. I will give it a look and answer any further questions tomorrow. Thanks for all the help!
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Translation: something, somewhere went wrong and the bootdisk is being blamed
If you get people asking the wrong questions, you don't have to worry about the answers
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Huh, the UBD. I could never even get that (downloaded image) file to create the bootdisk to try it out. I kept getting an "out of space on the floppy" error. Nowhere did I read that the floppy should be mdf'd. The UBD doesn't get my vote as a tool, especially an Ultimate one.
It's a good day when you learn something
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I've got a few of those that I downloaded but have never actually tried (most of them) out.
With rare exceptions, the basics (fdisk & format) are all you need, but folks seem to like having the 'ultimate' whatever - sometimes leading to problems (ultimately)
Maybe the 56K (or so) of RAM is the stumbling block here....
; )
If you get people asking the wrong questions, you don't have to worry about the answers
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Ok, I have had a chance to look at it again. When I start the computer up with a win 98 bootdisk it says that there are 3 possible problems.
1. bad partition on drive C:
2: a partition made with a secondary software
3: a virusThen it cams the ram drive drive c: and you can not access the hard drive at all because it doesn't give it a drive letter.
Computer info This computer is an old AT&T gobalyst 364tpc there is 56mb of ram, the hard drive is a western digital caviar 31600 I was WAY off on the size it is a 1624.6 MB drive. It was running fine before using the ultimate boot disk. It was up an running but had a few errors on boot due tothe improper removal of software by the previous user.
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Boot the machine with a 98 Bootdisk. (*) When you get the A:\> prompt, type in; fdisk. Hit Enter. Hit Enter again to accept Large Disk Support. Delete any partitions.
Create a new primary (active) partition. I'd use the entire 1.6GB. Exit and reboot. Format the new C: partition. Load Windows. Invest in more or larger RAM. 56MB won't go very far, even with Windows 95.
(*)
The above bootdisk image file is a self extracting file and has to be executed (run) from a running Windows machine in order to create the actual startup diskette. (This image file produces the same bootdisk which 98SE creates.) This downloaded image file will format the floppy disk, write the files to the disk, then verify the file write, so it'll take a minute or three to create the bootdisk.When you boot a machine with this boot floppy, it creates a RAMDRIVE in system memory to contain DOS system tools. Thus it will move your "normal" CDROM device/drive letter "up" one level. (If your CDROM is normally E:, it will be F: when booting with this bootdisk.) Watch for the CDROM device letter which will be assigned near the end of the floppy boot process.
It's a good day when you learn something
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I type fdisk and hit enter at a: prompt
NO FIXED DISK.
pops up and it goes back to the a: prompt.
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The bios isn't "seeing" the hard disk. Recheck all cables and disk jumpers.
It's possible the hard disk has died. If there is no response or recognition of the disk after checking the above, download the disk manufacturers diagnostic utilities and test the disk. These utilities (usually) bypass the system bios and "talk" directly to the hard disks controller board.
Disk Diagnostic Tools, major manufacturers
It's a good day when you learn something
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If by any chance you've been doing a little tinkering in BIOS then set it to default and save settings. If you haven't then ignore this post.
DerekW
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Good point Derek.
Have you made any bios changes, or, played around inside the machine? If so, a cable may have become partially dislodged.
Most motherboards default to AUTO settings for the hard disks. Some bios's will also have (further in, another "screen") Hard Disk Auto Detect. This works too, however it should be noted that if you run this feature, the AUTO setting (which you usually see in the first or Main screen, will get turned off and a "setting" placed in that "switch" or choice position. If another disk is later installed, you'll either have to set things back to AUTO in the first or Main screen, or rerun the Hard Disk Auto Detect feature.
It's a good day when you learn something
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That is it. I bought a new system battery because I knew the old one was worn out as it always lost time. I checked the bios and even after entering restore to default values (as I did while reseting the system clock) it doesn't show anything for the ide's I tried to autodetect but that didn't work. I hand entered the values but I don't have the prewrite comp value.
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http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:UQfOAKx6Mw4J:dante.embeddedlogic.com/TH99/h/txt/4763.txt+caviar+31600+values&hl=en
says it is 512 I entered that and it says fixed disk failure when I try to boot.
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Well, I think the drive is dead. I can't even pull it up on a second computer now. I jump it to slave mode but it doesn't recognize it at all.
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It certainly seems like it. You might be able to find a cheapie somewhere. It's becoming hard to find HD's small enough for early machines these days (other than second hand). You should be OK up to 60G though.
DerekW
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There's a good chance the bios on that won't be able to see a drive larger than 8 gig. Anything larger than that will probably require a drive overlay.
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Well....W98 is OK up to 63G (format F32/large disk support). Best to check that your motherboard can handle it tho.
DerekW
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Yeah, windows could handle it OK but a motherboard only running a 133 cpu probably has a bios to old to see anything larger than 8 gig. Most of those were limited to a C/H/S of 16383/16/63.
Danzigman, in using the manual congfiguration you don't need to set the precomp, just the cylinders, heads and sectors.
Also, check that the IDE port you've connected it to is enabled in cmos. Even if you auto detect it, a good drive won't show unless the controller is enabled.
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