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Someone with the knowledge to solve my dilemma? My computer config consists of one 22 GB IBM 22 GXP harddrive that is working irregular. Win 98 are installed and all worked fine until I used fdisk (in Win 98) to observe an old diskīs partitions. After a short moment fdisk returned a black screen with random junk-characters. I closed fdisk, returned to windows and restarted the comp. After the initial bootup the IBM disk-managerīs blue box showed up and the computer freezed. With the help of a startup-disk I started my computer in ordinary-dos and tried fdisk. Fdisk reported that the 22 GB is a non-dos disk. Is there any possibility that my computer can rebuild the boot-table (if itīs the problem). The information on the disk isnīt deleted so it must be possible to get it back - but how?
I did that once and wondered how my Primary MS-DOS partition jumped to a non-dos partition. Was right after partitioning my 20gig hard drive. I wanted to be sure it was ok after I installed windows. When I tried to install more programs it said there was no room in my MS-DOS partition and if I wanted to continue I would have to create at least one MS-DOS partition for use by that program. Using a startup disk I checked the fdisk and found my dos had jumped to non-dos. Now I know you can't check your partitions inside of windows and that is how it happened.
For you don't think there is a way to correct it except to back up your work and reformat/partition your HD. Sorry. Maybe someone else can advise you different but once your partitions are lost I know of no way to re-set them without the fdisk/format proceedure.
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That should be fdisk /mbr. That is supposed to restore the master boot record. I ran into the same problem and tried the above command with no luck but hopefully it will work better for you.
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If your 22 gig has a disk overlay, booting from a floppy and running fdisk will always identify it as a non-dos partiton.
When you say you used fdisk to observe an old disk's partitons, does that mean you opened up the case and added or switched the HDs? If so go into cmos and make sure everything is like it was before the changes. If not what does it mean?
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Firstly - thanks for the responses!
Daveincaps:> The whole thing started when I opened the box, inserted the old 6,4 GB disk, started Win and tried to use fdisk within Windows 98. All was correctly configured in BIOS, the new disk as Primary master and the second HD as slave on my secondary channel. When the junk-char arrived I turned off fdisk, returned to Win 98 and then restarted the computer. Since then is the computer non-bootable on the 22 gig drive. I guess my "stupid" intention was to observe if it was possible to change the old diskīs partitions, with fdisk within Windows. I didnīt come that far though - the junk char showed up before that.
JlJr:> Have tried fdisk /mbr 1, fdisk /mbr, fdisk /cmbr 1 and so on but to no avail. The disk is unfortunately still non-bootable. The one simple solution, to format the disk, is non-desirable - due to all not-safe-copied material on the disk. Could it exist some other solution to the problem?
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If you do have an overlay on the 22 gig it should give you the option of booting from the floppy after the overlay comes up but before it goes into windows. Then if it still hasn't frozen up, boot from a startup disk. Then see if you can access the C: drive. If so go back to A: and type sys c: to transfer the system files. If you have a anti virus rescue disk you should run that too.
good luck
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I think the best you can do is boot from a floppy, see if you can "see" HD directories, and copy whatever files you want to keep because you may be heading toward fdisk/format.
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I know the original problem was posted 5 days ago, but I kept it in MY COMPUTING.NET out of interst to see the responses and I have only just got back to it. I think one of the confusing things in the situation of adding a HDD is the allocation of drive letters. I have 1 physical HDD split into 4 drives, allocated obviously C: D: E: and F:. The other day when I added someones drive to my mc to check it (and I had all the jumpers set correctly), I was momentarily confused. I thought that the added HDD would be allocated G: but it did not. It put my boot drive as C:, the added single partition drive as D: and then my 3 other logical drives as E: F: and G:. Whether this has caused some confusion for you when running FDISK from inside Windows I do not know.
I can run FDISK from a DOS screen inside windows without any trouble and view my partitions and logical drive info. Everything is correct. No problem. In the light of what has happened with you, perhaps it is not the best thing to do but it works OK with me. I have just done it.
Last week someone E-mailed me a problem. Their computer would not boot up(Win98). I advised them to boot up from a floppy and see if they could access the C: drive. They said that they could get to a C: prompt but when they went DIR all they got was what you described as junk letters on the screen.
I asked them to run FDISK and they reported as you did a NON-DOS partition. I then asked them to go into the BIOS and make sure the HDD detect settings were set to AUTO. They came back and said that they had changed them to AUTO and now the machine booted OK. They never said what they were before they changed them. I can only assume that the autodetect had been set to something like 'normal' and should have been set to LBA and that now having it on AUTO had corrected the problem. I don't know whether any of this helps you or anyone else for the future but all the best. Computers often do the most unexplainable things.
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