Tried to install a "Partion" program... Help!

[BlueEyes4U]

Hi All!

We tried to install a new partion program called Partion Commander. Ack!!!! It didn't like the fact that we had fat 32 on the system, and aborted the setup. Its now stopped us from getting into windows. Its partially installed and keeps bringing us into some form of its program. There is an unistall feature, but because we didn't install it all the way its not there. When I try to go into windows manually off the C drive it says that there's a problem with the "vfat" system and halts startup.

I can get into Win98 in safemode but that doesn't let me do much.

Help!! Any suggestions how to get around this?

Thanks!! /forum/smile.gif

[Underclocked]

Partition. In safe mode, you might run a full surface scan of the hard drive and see if scandisk can make any repairs. If it is Win98, then you might wish to run registry check and system file checker from the system tools.
A wild shot that I've no experience with is the FAT32 drive convertor in system tools. See what the options are there.

[jonathankeeping]

How much free space to you hard a drive C: (or the partion you are booting from)?

[Susan]

Did you run the uninstall feature - if not, try it.

If that's no good, boot to a: with a bootable disk and type fdisk /mbr. Reboot and see if that works.

[BlueEyes4U]

Hi!

Underclocked: We tried everything you said.. still not working. Its telling us that we don't have enough drive letters available. I've added a command line to the Config.sys telling it to put the last drive at Z. But still won't boot into 98 properly, but we can still access it through safe mode.

Jonathan: We only have 332 MB available for the C drive. When we partitioned it before we figured that 1 gig should be enough for that drive to have windows on it. But something seems to be taking up alot of space. We also have McAfee virus and Soundblaster programs on there. (that was the only drives they would let us install the software to)

I'm about to reformat the C drive and reinstall 98 again. There doesn't seem to be anything else i can do... But i'll wait a bit and see if anyone has any other info available.

Thanks!!

[Underclocked]

Can you rename config.sys and autoexec.bat to something else? Like config.007 or something. Then reboot.
Also, I think you should run fdisk on that drive and check the partition information. You may need to do the old fdisk thing in addition to formatting.

[jonathankeeping]

If you have drive letters behond Z then you have a serious master boot record problem. Was this partion commander an ald FAT 16 version or what!!! If you are going to re-install Windows you will still need to sort out your partions. I had a similar problem and it was very hard to sort out even using norton utils. Your best bet is to run FDISK and remove all the partions it shows. That way you can start all clean and fresh.

[BlueEyes4U]

The C drive has always been Fat32 for some reason. When we put this hard drive in a few months back Win98 automatically formatted it that way. We never had an option about that.

When I try to Fdisk, I get the first screen asking if we want to use the large disk mode. I said Yes and then all i get are a bunch of characters. I know this isn't good. I think that i'm gonna have to format and start over /forum/frown.gif

Any other suggestions?

[jonathankeeping]

When you say you get a bunch of characters in FDISK, do you mean its all messed up?

[BlueEyes4U]

I get 2 lines at the bottom of the screen that look like playing card characters and that's it. Then the whole system freezes on me and i have to reboot.

We've had to disconnect our 2nd drive, because it kept telling us that we didn't have enough drive letters for the CD rom. That was the only way we could get the CDrom to function at all. At most under normal circumstances our drives only go out to letter M and we have the last drive set to Z. So not sure what the issue is there...

Thank you all for all your help! /forum/smile.gif It is really appreciated

[jonathankeeping]

I hate to tell you this but you have a very serious problem on your hands!!! You won't be able to format your HD if FDISK won't work. Basically the partion program you ran(which is FAT16) has tryed to edit you partion which is FAT32. This basically means your partions are screwed right now. When this happened to me, I had to get hold of a very old Norton Utilities for DOS (perhaps 8 years old now). When I ran the Norton Disk Doctor, it sorted the whole HD out. It might be a good idea to try running FDISK from an old DOS 3.3 boot disk. This would contain the older FAT16 FDISK which might work. If it doesn't i'll see if I give you this norton somehow!!! Good Luck with the PC.

P.S. you can e-mail me at jonathankeeping@hotmail.com