I was given an old Celeron 667Mhz system which used to have NT on it and I'd like to reformat the drive and put 98se on it. Its a 20 gig drive divided into approx 15gig and 5gig partitions. I'm not able to delete the extended partition using fdisk from a win98se boot disk.

It tells me to delete the logical drives first but there are no logical drives. I was able to delete the primary dos partition but I'm stuck being unable to delete this 5 gig extended partition.

It seems to put me into a catch 22. I can't delete the extended partition without deleting logical drives but there are no logical drives to delete. Whats going wrong and how do I get rid of this partition?

Thanks

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU

I would try maybe running an debug script on the drive to clear all partitions. This may help.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/106419

The easiest and easiest way would be to run Ranish Partition Manager from a bootable CD.

The hard drive manufacturers also have various disk tools that you can use to create/delete/format hard drive partitions.

Good Luck!
-Bob

Are you running the updated FDISK for Win ME. You'll need it for the larger HDD.

I could be mistaken, but I believe NT uses NTSF file system like XP. Delete the non-Dos Partitionn if it exists.

Here's a MS link that may supply answers.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255...

Bob (also)

There is nothing to learn from someone who already agrees with you.

Download and use Delpart to remove the logical drives. Fdisk can't work with NTFS partitions very well.

Yeah, delpart:

http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart...

It's a small file you can add to your bootdisk. Be sure to save the changes before exiting delpart or it'll leave the partitions intact.

A zero-fill utility could be used too. It will wipe the drive, including partitions.

If the primary was removed and others remain, it's totally hosed.

#1 As usual, M$ makes a simple thing complicated.

#3 You don't need Me fdisk for a 20GB drive.

Here's the script you need:

::== nukeHD1
@echo off > nuke1.d

echo This will NUKE the hard drive partition on the first hard drive
echo.
echo If this is not what you want to do, STOP NOW!
pause
echo.

>> nuke1.d echo f 200 L200 0
>> nuke1.d echo a 100
>> nuke1.d echo mov ax,301
>> nuke1.d echo mov bx,200
>> nuke1.d echo mov cx,1
>> nuke1.d echo mov dx,0080
>> nuke1.d echo int 13
>> nuke1.d echo int 3
>> nuke1.d echo.
>> nuke1.d echo d 100 LF
>> nuke1.d echo g=100
>> nuke1.d echo q

debug < nuke1.d

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

http://www.killdisk.com

Too much information...

DelPart or KillDisk will work just fine.

Cannot speak for M2's script?

Win98 bootdisk cannot read NTFS partitions. DelPart can read and delete them.

Once deleted then re-use the Win98 bootdisk.

Bryan

Thanks guys. Delpart worked fine. The drive is currently in a non-hosed condition.

Asus P5N-E SLI
Intel Dual Core E6750 2.66Ghz
Asus EN8600GTS 256Meg
2 gig Crucial 800Mhz DDR2
WD 320 gig SATA 2
Lite On 20x20 DVD-RW
CoolerMaster Mystique case w/500 watt PSU