Problem Reformating Hard Drive
Hello there i have stumbled on a very perculiar problem, i say im quite good with computers and even the likes on my cannot find a way around the problem, i have explained below the problem in detail.
I currently own a gericom laptop, the total disc space in it is 80GB, i used up about 40GB and then my computer messed up so i reinstalled windows, however i could not delete the remaining partitioned space, i thought nothing of it and thought to myself well 40GB will take me a while to use up but now i have used up 72GB of space out of the 80GB allocated in my drive.
I wanted to delete the 1st 40GB (the other account i created) but all i get is access denied to i thought ok im just going to reformat, i have put all my files onto DVD and i want to reformat the hard drive from scratch but thats where the problem comes in.
I insert the windows XP disc and go through the steps until i get to the delete partition bit and it says "cannot delete partition" i try to create a new partition but nothing happens, i can create another copy of windows on old partition but that isnt what i want.
I then got hold of a copy of "powerquest partition magic" and when i go to create a new partition with that it still wont let me.
I am on a 4month old laptop and it did not come with a floppy drive to the boot disc option is not currently a possibility, how can i do this?
I am really stumbled i am using a copy of windows XP professional, NTFS file format and i dont know how i can reformat the drive.
I once managed to exit the windows installation and somehow got into dos, i remember from my old dos days you typed mount then the drive letter but it would not have it, still didnt work.
If anybody can help me it would be great as im desperate to start from the beginning.
thanks, mark
I currently own a gericom laptop, the total disc space in it is 80GB, i used up about 40GB and then my computer messed up so i reinstalled windows, however i could not delete the remaining partitioned space, i thought nothing of it and thought to myself well 40GB will take me a while to use up but now i have used up 72GB of space out of the 80GB allocated in my drive.
I wanted to delete the 1st 40GB (the other account i created) but all i get is access denied to i thought ok im just going to reformat, i have put all my files onto DVD and i want to reformat the hard drive from scratch but thats where the problem comes in.
I insert the windows XP disc and go through the steps until i get to the delete partition bit and it says "cannot delete partition" i try to create a new partition but nothing happens, i can create another copy of windows on old partition but that isnt what i want.
I then got hold of a copy of "powerquest partition magic" and when i go to create a new partition with that it still wont let me.
I am on a 4month old laptop and it did not come with a floppy drive to the boot disc option is not currently a possibility, how can i do this?
I am really stumbled i am using a copy of windows XP professional, NTFS file format and i dont know how i can reformat the drive.
I once managed to exit the windows installation and somehow got into dos, i remember from my old dos days you typed mount then the drive letter but it would not have it, still didnt work.
If anybody can help me it would be great as im desperate to start from the beginning.
thanks, mark
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Is they any other way of getting around this? im sure they must b a way, will i have to buy an external floppy drive and create a boot disc?, id rather not go down that route but if theres any way of deleting within a way i have not tried please let me know
thanks
What you have to do is locate the hard drive in the laptop. It's probably not very hard to do - download the service manual for your laptop. Generally most laptop HDs are held in by a single screw. Ghoosdum's article how to upgrade your laptop might be very helpful for you.
Yes, you'll need to remove the HD. You won't be able to do this while the HD is inside of that laptop. If it made no sense, you should probably take the computer to a repair shop or someone who has done this kind of thing before.
is this what you mean? if not please explain more thanks
or something like this.
The idea is to plug the LAPTOP HARD DRIVE into a DESKTOP COMPUTER and format it from there.
so if i unplug the the drive and put it into my desktop downstairs and then right click on the drive and press format it should allow me to do it? or if i use a program such as "partition magic 8.0" i should be able to do this yes?
thanks for the help
Ill keep you posted on how it goes and if not ill have to buy an external floppy drive for afew quid off ebay and create a boot disk.
Who makes the drive? Each manufacturer has their own tool. Some DO provide bootable CD images, some provide only Floppy images.
im going to have a look on toshibas website see if i get any luck.
let me know if you know of anything
I then tried another option which was to contact the supplier of the hard drive and ask them to send me some low level or fill i nsoftware but toshiba told me they didnt have a licence to distribute such software, they recomended i try 1 of 3 websites.
One of the websites was killdisk.com, on this website you can erase your hard drive and start again from scratch(that is the theory) by downloading the appropiate software, putting the image onto CD/DVD and running it when you reboot. i have added a link below of what it says you can do(scroll to the bottom of the page, it explains how to use the hard drive again once its been erased).
http://www.killdisk.com/killdisk-faq.htm
After viewing this i then got hold of a copy of FDISK and FORMAT and burnt them both onto seperate CDs as my laptop DOES NOT have a floppy drive.
I put the FDISK in the drive and reboot and nothing happens, i tried the same with the FORMAT CD and nothing happens.
The only thing i can load is the killdisk CD, i tried to run windows XP CD and nothing happens.
Now when i start up my computer i get a statement something like "rom drive device needed" something like that
It then goes onto display the word DHCP followed by a few dots.
After this it comes up with a message saying something like "insert media in device" i persume by "device" they are refering to my CD/DVD rom, i have been in the BIOS settings and my CD ROM is the thing which loads first,then the hard drive.
I then read in a forum try a windows 98 boot disk and try FDISK that way, but again i put the image onto CD and try to load and same error comes up as before in a dos kind of enviroment.
So now i have no windows only this message what appears in a dos kind of enviroment, i have managed to access an A:\ drive but says cannot use it and when i type CD(change directory) C:\ says not enough memory to perform the task
Please help i cannot figure out how to get out of it
From the sounds of it you wiped your drive (since xp is nolonger booting and its trying to boot from the network).
You should beable to pop in the xp cd in create a new partition (use ntfs) then format it.
(My laptop does not have a floppy drive)
Now when i load my laptop up it comes up in a dos kind of enviroment and displays the following:
"Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (Build 082)
Copyright (c) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation
SiS900 PXE BootROM v1.09 Hook Int19
CLIET MAX ADDR: 00 03 0D 28 FC 91 GUID: 00020003-0004-0005-0006-000700080009
PXE-E51: No DHCP or ProxyDHCP offers were received.
PXE M0F: Exiting Intel PXE ROM
Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Media in selected Boot device and press a key"
again i have been in then BIOS settings and changed the priority to load the Cd 1st, i also persume by device they are refering to my CD Drive.
I tried to put FDISK on and FORMAT but i now think i may of put them onto CD wrong
Anybody heard of how to get out of this then tell me, i am on a desktop at the minute and yes i can put files onto CD if needed but only program i have managed to load so far from reboot via CD is KillDisk.
Thanks, Mark
It will be much easier for people to help you if the entire saga of your woes is available in ONE SINGLE THREAD, and not STREWN ALL AROUND THE FORUMS IN NUMEROUS DIFFERENT THREADS.
Thanks!
ok i cannot access windows, as you can see from a post i posted today ive stated an error message which comes up after using killdisk.
Anybody know what i have 2 do next? i am being told its an error message coming from the BIOS and asking me for a boot disk. My file format is NTFS i think thats it and ive tried to run FDISK via a Cd and no it wont have it.
Anybody know a rom which might work? so far all i can load from Cd is killdisk which is a bit of a pain considering i can no longer use my laptop for the time being.
As isay all im after is getting past this stage then i can put my OS back on
yes after so long ive found a way around it(well some legendary god did), what you have 2 do is insert your windows 98 CD(if u have 1 lying about or borrow 1) and do it that way and then upgrade the OS to XP.
Its genious somebody told me and it worked i cannot thank them enough, so if you EVER reformat a hard drive and XP wont go on then use WINDOWS 98 DISK.
you learn something new everyday.
Thanks to everyone who tried to help
Either way, glad to hear that you're on the way to getting things going again.
To install XP i need at least 1.85Gb of space which i cannot do as the 350mb which are installed at the minute are system files and i cannnot delete to make room.
Before i reformatted the hard drive in the 1st place i had over 6GB left, any ideas of why it has only gave me 1.99gb of space?
Also i have been into dos to try and install XP and i cannot locate my CD/DVD drive in dos only the C drive,although i can access the CD drive in windows, even if the old partition bit remains i cannot access it as it is on a different file format NTFS.
what do i do?
Do you recon if i download some partition software and search through that i may get some luck?
FDISK does not work with NTFS well enough to make any sense in using it. FORMAT (from bootdisks/ Win98) only formats in FAT/FAT32, not NTFS. DO NOT USE THESE UTILITES TO INSTALL WINDOWS XP! Yes, you technically can but it's just stupid to.
You need a real copy of Windows. Plain and simple. You can still use 98 but you'll end up spending money for partition software to fix your 2 GB problem anyway or figure out how to format the drive correctly before installing Win98 (means starting all over). Why waste the money circumventing your real problem of bad XP CD?
Buy a legit copy xp is fairly cheep.
edit: If your intrestrest in buying a copy of windows xp home click the following links.
Click here if you live in the USA
Click here if you live in Canada
Click here if you live in the UK
Some VERY GOOD news to report.
Ok in brief this is what i did below:
1st i installed 98 and noticed that it would only allow me to have up to 2gb of space, i wondered y this was and then i realised the hard drive has been set up for FAT format and on that format the maximum space allowed is 2GB.
I then copied "partition magic" from the desktop downstairs and installed it because i was wondering what happened to the remaining 78GB, i then found out through partition magic that the other 78gb was unallicated and it was when i read through the help file it told me that the maximum allowed on a FAT drive was 2gb.
I then had a little think and tried to install XP anyways and this wouldnt happen because of the lack of space i couldnt install it even if i wanted tpo install it on another bit of the drive i couldnt as it wouldnt get up to that point because of lack of hard drive space.
My system then crashed and wouldnt load up so again i had to put 98 back on with 2gb of space again.
I reinstalled "partition magic" and "boot magic" and then converted the hard drive from FAT to FAT32
By doing this it allowed me to add to the hard drive as FAT32 can have anything up to 120gb i believe, i then added an extra 2gb to the hard disk to make it up to 4gb.
I rebooted and then when it loaded up i could then install XP because i then had enough space to do so, once xp started and rebooted i then got the option to install in the unallocated space, i then made the file format NTFS as i wanted it to be and formatted the hard drive which took about 30 or 40mins. After which i then installed XP.
The setup crashed twice but after restarting it got there in the end, i think it crashed because my laptop overheated and i left it 10mins or so before re-installing.
once installation was successful i then managed to put the internet connection software onto it and then downloaded the drivers from the laptop makes website.
After a reboot i then came on to tell people i had cracked it and i thank everybody for the help they have given me.
I couldnt of done it without most of you guys and whoever had the boot with windows 98 1st idea you are a legend!!!!!!.
you can now close this post admin or mod not unless you want to leave it open to direct people to it who have that problem.
It wasd a long hault but i got there in the end, cheers dudes(ettes)
thanks once again
I now have a copy of windows 98 on my hard drive(C: Drive)4gb in total and a copy of XP(E: Drive) 71gb total
If anything happens again i can now revert to the windows 98 drive for a quick reboot instead of going through the wipe the whole partition clean with killdisk etc. process.
I am all set up now, just installing all my programs again.
Also i noticed in windows 98 you can only view the one drive but in XP you can view multiple, if i was trying to create a drive from XP it would of been simple but because i was trying to create another 1 in 98 it was tricky but i got there in the end :-)
thanks once again and like i said you can either close the thread or keep it incase somebody else experiances a simular problem
Not sure at all how you ended up with your results of updating Win98 to XP but now having separate Win98 and WinXP installations. How you did it is your deal.
Windows 98 can not see NTFS partitions BTW. That's why you only see 1 drive in 98 but both in XP.
Yeh i figured as much and i now know thats why it wouldnt let me, although partition magic would let me view the ntfs hard drive in windows 98 but when i typed the location in with 98 nothing came up but like most things theres always a way around things.
Yeh i didnt bother just updating windows 98 because i wanted to keep 98 on as a backup so i installed fresh in the unallicated space.
My problems are all sorted now and by the way i downloaded windows media player 11, its quite good, give it a check out.
I guess its worth while keeping this thread open as somebody might experiance simular problem, its just lucky i dont give up on things easilly otherwise i would of take it to get fixed which would of cost me about £50.
Just fortunate to have a desktop downstairs so i can get help off you guys to get me through it.