Fdisk and format hard drive

[cmagnusson]

Another suggestion...

delpart

Stick it on a floppy, reboot and run it. It'll delete any type of partition.

btw, all the previous posts about setting the drive as master, that shouldn't be necessary. Fdisk can delete/create partitions on slaves, too. You just get a fifth option, to change current drive.

[doctor_tardis]

have a similar problem with HDD that had W98SE installed.
suspect a virus has infected the MBR so I am trying to re-partition the HDD however fdisk cannnot read the drive !!
yet I am able to format the drive.
Tried wipedisk but it cannot boot.
any suggestions?

[FijiJohn]

2 suggestions; 1 - Don't mix or hijack threads. 2 - you might try fdisk /mbr to rewrite the mbr. (Be warned it casn be dangeous: /MBR Warning

[BillDing]

I have tried all the suugestions but I still can't fdisk the hard drive. I know that the problem is with Ms-dos 6.22 which cannot not be removed.Is there any body who knows about Ms-dos 6.22 and tell me what I must do? I now that the hard drive is ok but I got to fdisk and reformat before I install windows. Bill

[jmichna]

Originally posted by BillDing
I have tried all the suugestions but I still can't fdisk the hard drive. I know that the problem is with Ms-dos 6.22 which cannot not be removed.Is there any body who knows about Ms-dos 6.22 and tell me what I must do? I now that the hard drive is ok but I got to fdisk and reformat before I install windows. Bill

Bill....
DOS is DOS is DOS... it should be no more difficult to FDISK this drive than doing the same from DOS 2.0 through to Windows 3.0, and on to WinMe.

You say you've "tried everyone's suggestions"... Let's please confirm:
- Have you tried using the ZAP utility?

- Who is the hard drive manufacturer? Have you been to their website to see if they hace a drive utility that will do the same thing that ZAP does? IBM has their "Drive Fitness Test" (DFT)... it will zero write any hard drive.

- Have you tied going to Bootdisk.com, and downloading the files necessary to create an MS-DOS 6.22 bootdisk? Use this to FDISK the drive.

I don't mean to be insulting, but are you confused how to use FDISK? You need to delete exiting partitions first.

If these don't work, then I think you have a problem with the drive itself.

Good luck,
jmichna

[jmichna]

Some FDISK Reference Sources:

MS FDISK Commands Page:
http://www.computerhope.com/fdiskhlp.htm

FDISK Tutorials:
http://fdisk.radified.com/

http://www.firmware.com/support/bios/fdisk.htm

http://www.pcabusers.com/fdisk.html

[europanorama]

use seagates diskmanager. you will have a bootdisk then. then go to maintainance or similar and wipe the drive out with zero or low-level. some drives which are not allowed to be zeroed will be blocked. i had never troubles using zerolevel format.

do not format to use fdisk to create a partition. if you create more than once you will have to activate the first one. otherwise you cannot install windows.

i dont know if you have pentium 1, maybe mmx. i would use eighter windows 98a for a pentium 1(it depends how big hdd is)
or windows me for a pentium 166mmx with 1,6 gb. its is working even on internet. dont forget using nortion system works. this has all utilities you need to keep your hdd running and checking. its easy to use. if you will go to internet you willl need norton firewall, adaware 6.0(lavasoft.com or .de and spybot (use google to search for it.

setting up a pc is easy if everything is clean, e.g. contacts on board and videocard/ram.

[MickMitani]

DOS 6.22 should not be a problem. Disk compression, if installed, could be an issue but if you boot from a floppy that should allow you to get FDISK running. Are you sure that you have a good IDE cable? When working on a co-worker's computer I had the same problem you mentioned going from WIN95A to WIN95B, and it turned out that the IDE cable had rubbed against the CPU fan and some of the plastic had melted. When I replaced the IDE cable the drive could be FDISKed and partitioned.

[edtrip]

You tried the aforementioned delpart.exe and it didn't work?

When I ran into a similar problem that's what I used. It's an old MS utility for deleting partitions that fdisk can't.

[drbazzaw]

Sounds to me like that disk has been set up with some non-DOS partitioning software. I've had similar situations with EZBios for Western Digitals - you gotta get rid of it first before you go back to vanilla DOS partitioning & formating. Problem is knowing what the heck it was set up with. I also recall having a similar problem years ago with 6.2 which I solved, but stuffed if I can joggle the gray matter as to how. Will scatch my brain ....... when the drive boots normally (to dos), do any messages come up prior to DOS prompt like 'hold space key to boot from floppy' ???????

[rraehal]

If you have a copy of a partioining software such as partition magic and you try to use it, It may tell you what software if any you have such as EZ Bios. I had a friends computer drive that had this. I was forced to buy EZ Bios and remove it before the PC would let the disk run as a slave. (They got a new PC and could not put their drive in as a slave.) Partition Magic told me EZ Bios was installed.

I agree that these softwares can mess up utilities but the ZAP program should kill this problem. When you booted from the floppy you typed in "ZAP 0" or "ZAP 1" at the command prompt right. Typinbg ZAP alone will only give you usage inmfo and not do anything.