I wanted to completely clean one of my pc's. So what I did, is I "wrote zeroes" to my hard drive using a batch file posted here which is written in assembly and does this. So, after this, I wanted to do "fdisk /mbr" because I wanted to overwrite master boot record, to ensure that a nasty virus I got is completely gone. So I had this: A:\> and I typed "fdisk /mbr" A:\>fdisk /mbr And I got the following error: "No Fixed Disk Present". I restarted PC, and I tried it several times, and I keep getting the same error. Normally, some people say that hard drive might not be properly connected or something is wrong that the pc cannot see hard drive. However, right after doing an unsuccessful "fdisk /mbr" ... without restarting or doing anything ... I type "fdisk" and it works just fines and partitions the drive just fine. So, I now just did an "fdisk" at the A prompt, and it worked fine, and then I formatted C drive: A:\>fdisk However, I really wanted to overwrite Master boot record, because of the virus, and as of now, I'm not completely sure if it is gone for sure. Can someone please tell me why I get this error? Or if having taken all the steps above, there is no possibility of a virus still hiding in my pc. I get real paranoid with these viruses, but I hope someone can answer my question. P.S. I have gotten the same error in the past when I do "fdisk /mbr", but everything works just fine if I do "fdisk" ... again... not even restarting or changing anything on pc. For some reason, I cannot do "fdisk /mbr", but "fdisk" works fine. Kind of weird.

I think the virus is not letting you fdisk /mbr. Have you run an antivirus program on this disk?

Run DELPART.exe on the drive. (Do a net search for it, I know its at microsoft.com.) This will find any partition/boot record on the drive. Delete any/all, exit, then run Fdisk to re-create a primary dos partition and make it active.

FDISK /mbr is a nasty and dangerous command, which is undocumented by Microsoft for obvious reasons. Stick to the standard fdisk command. If you overwrote the drive with zeros, your virus is completely gone, no need to worry. By the way your initial error "no fixed disk present" was due to the use of the /mbr option. You need to define and set the partition active before you can see it.

http://www.compguystechweb.com/index.html and just reconfigure the drive afresh.

thanks for the replies. And thanks Ellis as well ... all I basically wanted to know is if there is no possibility of a virus still hiding. I just wanted to be sure :) Regarding this: "By the way your initial error "no fixed disk present" was due to the use of the /mbr option. You need to define and set the partition active before you can see it." This is what I initially did: -wrote zeroes to drive. -tried fdisk /mbr [which didnt work] -tried fdisk, which set drive active, and created a partition. -tried fdsik /mbr again ... didnt work. I dont know if I'm using this command wrong. So, could you please tell me the procedure you would follow in a case like many where I wrote zeroes to drive and wanted to overwrite boot record?? I have formatted pc many times in the past, and I have never been able to do /mbr ... seems I'm doing something wrong??? Thanks for your help. ------- As for the other replies: I did scan this drive for viruses (virii ?) and it had a few ... but they were ALL deleted. And I also obtained some tools from symantec website to specifically make sure the viruses found were gone for sure. However, I get real paranoid with viruses, and so, since I was cleaning my pc, i decided to write zeroes to it. ---

Try to run in the following sequence. Execute each from a boot disk - fdisk (define and set as primary DOS, Active) reboot (required) format /s (make it bootable) fdisk /status (verify partition) And then just for fun before installing any software: fdisk /mbr