“Drive C does not contain valid FAT or FAT32 partition”

[John of Gwent]

I have two Hard drives. No1 = ”C” (W98 and applications). No2 = “D”.(Data), and CDR = “E”, and CDRW = “F”.

Used Partition Magic 5.0 to add another partition to Drive No1.
All went well until restart when everything stopped with screen displaying “Verifying DMI pool data”.

Rebooted from floppy
Tried to install W98 and get message “Drive C does not contain valid FAT or FAT32 partition”
Found that : “C” is now ramdrive. “D” is now CDR, and “E” is CDRW. I understood that when the ramdrive was installed the other drive letters moved up one.
Run FDISK/STATUS and found no results under the “FDD status” header.

I have searched on “Drive C does not contain valid FAT or FAT32 partition”. Results found talk about installation of W2000 and above and formatting
I am just worried about accidentally destroying my data.

I would be grateful for any assistance.

[rraehal]

It is my opinion that PM 5 ruined your partition table. It effectively wiped out all of your data.

Boot with you 98 CD or Floppy. Run FDISK , enable large disk support. Slect option 4 (or whatever displays partition information). It will most likely tell you that there are no partitions defined. If this is the case, you should partition your drive and format each partition. Reinstall Windows after that. If Win9x or Me can not see a valid C drive, they generate that error or tell you there is not enough free space to install.

[Ol'Tunzafun]

Perhaps drive C: does not contain a valid FAT32 partition because it is the RAMdrive.

I understood that when the ramdrive was installed the other drive letters moved up one.

That is true, but if the BIOS is not detecting the two harddisks, then the letter assignments collapse into the void left by their diappearance.

Are the two harddisks detected in the BIOS? When you start up, are they reported on the first screen, right after the memory count?
Were the harddisks rearranged physically, such that cable connections or jumper settings may have been altered?

[John of Gwent]

Thanks for the prompt reply both.

Answering your questions Ol'Tunzafun .
Q 1: Yes. I see Pri Master HDD, and Pri Slave HDD (followed by CDROM and CDRW).
Q2: The second HDD was added by my local shop and has not been touched since (>2yrs).

rraehal .
I am happy to partition and reformat HDD1 but can I unplug HDD2 first to protect the data ?

[rraehal]

You can unplug HDD2 and you should not have any problems. Just plug it back in when you are done.

Plug and unplug with the power off of course. ;) :D

[John of Gwent]

I was unable to partition HDD. None of the FDISK functions would go. Computer just seemed to hang.
Being a bit pushed for time I gave the problem to my computer shop. They used some other software to put the 2 partitions on HDD1, and reloaded W98. They advised me to give up PM5, (no argument there).
Thanks for the assist.