Startup Disk / Boot Disk ?

[Zak]

I'm trying help a friend on how to use Fdisk, in order to reformat their hard drive... via Email. From what I've been told her X has corrupted a lot of files on the computer and she can not startup her computer properly.

Now she does have Fdisk. I told her that she would also need a Win98 boot disk, but all she has is a startup disk. Whould that be the same as a boot disk? Once she has re-partitioned, and formatted the drive would the "statup disk" boot up her machine ?

Thanks

[SPEEDO]

The computers bios will have to be set to boot to the A:> drive.

Yes the startup disk will do this for you.

Once she does fdisk and format the hard drive will be blank and an operating system will need to be installed.
Along with all the drivers to....
:)

SPEEDO

[Psycho Logical]

The best time to find out if a startup/boot disk will work is before you need it.

Technically speaking, a boot disk only needs the two hidden system files and Command.com to be able to get to the A: prompt, but there is not much you can do from there as far as installing anything.

The disk you create using the Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Startup Disk procedure does have all the files necessary to start with CD-ROM support, but it does not have Fdisk on it by default. You have to copy that file to the disk yourself.

If an already-formatted hard drive is unpartitioned now, and you don't want it to make any additional (extended) partitions, you can skip Fdisk and just format it.

[Zak]

Thanks for the replies........

[ukulele]

Corrupted files could indicate problems with the harddrive. Run scandisk in thorough mode (full surface scan) first. If a lot of bad sectors are reported you might want to use fdisk to remove the old partition and create a new one, then reformat. Also after making a startup disk and copying fdisk on it, run scandisk on it too. A junk floppy startup disk can be a real bummer if you fdisk and run into problems trying to format the drive. I have made more then a few bad startup disks that ended up in the round file.