| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 30313 | 2003-02-15 21:52:00 | drive wont format, please help | eldar-colonel (3179) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 121551 | 2003-02-15 21:52:00 | This is the wierdest and biggest problem (that I can remember :) ) that I have ever seen. I'll try to make this as short as possible but it's a longish story so you guys know all the facts. I just put together an older computer out of spare parts, specs are: DFI am75-ec mobo seagate 6.4 gig ata33 drive (i know) samsung cd 512mb sd 133 savage 4 video 3com lan card dynalink modem I have tried to format it with both win98 and winxp, for both I use fdisk from an old win98 bootdisk, clear the partition, reboot, make a new one, reboot and then run the op systems install, always when it gets to format the install sais there is an error on the hard disk and it cannot format and it cannot install on this partition. The strange thing is, the same hard drive in my computer using the same procedure works fine. I thought it may have been the ide cable, so i replaced it with 2 new ones, it can't be the hard drive because it works in my computer, the motherboard seems to work fine (it still reads the drives and such fine so i presume its working). And at one stage I actually had it all working with winxp installed after taking everything out, clearing the cmos on the mobo and putting everything back in, but then winxp refused to run certain programs, just stating they had errors (mostly new games). I'm completely out of ideas, sorry about the length of the post, I would be grateful for ANY help. Cheers all. |
eldar-colonel (3179) | ||
| 121552 | 2003-02-15 22:47:00 | First thing to check is that virus protection in BIOS is disabled, also after making sure the partition is active (it will be if there is only one partition), try formatting with format.com first rather than trying to install from setup.exe ( Im thinking of win98 not XP, havent run XP) Thats all I can think of at the moment ! |
Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 121553 | 2003-02-15 23:54:00 | @ eldar-colonel Agree with the previous post, re, check virus checking options are off in your BIOS. Assuming your only going to install W98, assuming you've booted from a floppy disk and assuming you've just used FDISK to partition the whole disk (in one way or another) next thing I'd do from the a:\ prompt is - a:\format c /s If I've got the syntax right that should format your hard drive and copy some base files across to the hard drive to allow the rest of the system to be installed. Reboot and hopefully awaaay you go !! If your want to dual boot I'm not sure of the order of things so I can't comment other than I'd probably go and install W98 first, followed by XP, using FAT32 as the file structure. Hope this helps, in some small way ..... |
blank_harry (1661) | ||
| 121554 | 2003-02-16 00:47:00 | Err..almost, blank_harry, a colon after c, ie format c: /s :) | Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 121555 | 2003-02-16 00:54:00 | well, virus protection is off, beleive me i have tried all the basic stuff and i know alot of different ways to format the drive, the thing that gets me is that it will work on my pc, but not in this old one, im starting to suspect the drive itself (might be on the way out)? | eldar-colonel (3179) | ||
| 121556 | 2003-02-16 01:28:00 | I wonder if the drive has had a dynamic drive overlay installed at any time. Try visiting the Seagate site and downloading a disk diagnosis utility or disk manager, I think there will probaly one, and see what that tells you about the drive. | Terry Porritt (14) | ||
| 121557 | 2003-02-16 01:38:00 | @ Terry Thanks for the reminder - two too many gin and tonic's for me I'm afraid !! Pity the surf isn't up ... @ eldar-colonel At the time this HD was in in your regular PC had you been using the NTFS file system? From my limited repetoire of knowledge my understanding of this topic is that if you have been using NTFS and then try to convert back to FAT16 or FAT32, as indeed you would have to in order to get W98 to run on the second PC, you might incur some problems. What those problems might be I can't remember. Sorry. If I had a link regarding the workarounds required I'd post it - but I don't. Only thing I can think of presently is to suggest that you go off to microsoft technet and search on that theme for some articles. Even a google group search may help. Still, it could be the HD is going down, but if it works in your other PC then perhaps that theory can be given about 50% weightling in terms of being true. How about checking the disk formatting options in the BIOS? Check whether it's set to LBA, Auto OR those other configurations that I can't remember presently unless I check my own BIOS. See whether they correspond or differ with the motherboard from whence the HD came from. One last thing, why not remove the LAN card and the modem and reorder the ram sticks just for good measure. Might have something to do with their checksums. It may not. If this all sounds way too flippant it ain't intended to be. Good luck ... |
blank_harry (1661) | ||
| 121558 | 2003-02-16 01:56:00 | What is the error message? I am sure the system did not say "there is an error on the hard disk and it cannot ...". The exact wording of the error message often helps. ;-) Does the BIOS accept a disk greater than 512 MB? Try deleting the partition on the other computer. A partition should be allocated (a) on the computer it is to be used on, (b) with the partitioning programme which belongs to the OS it is to be used with. Other ways of doing it might work. If it's been formatted as NTFS, I don't think it can be formatted as FATxx, without using FDISK on it. |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 121559 | 2003-02-17 11:52:00 | 1. try getting the *exact* error message otherwise the process of support may be slow or undesired/far from ideal 2. have you tried setup /? i think there is a option there for setup /is or setup /ix which disables some of the features which may be applicable with a boot disk from a different version although this is not the only option: try setup /? as it lists most of the options |
Captive (3159) | ||
| 121560 | 2003-02-17 19:11:00 | I'm with Graham L on this one. Go into your bios,and find out the reported size of the disk. | roofus (483) | ||
| 1 2 | |||||