FDisk is a pain

Lydesia

I have a 3 year old Compaq notebook and there are 2 OS's on it, Win XP (the activation time has expired ) and Win 2k (which is giving me a lot of problems) Anyways, i got a fresh copy of XP Pro which i want to install. Im trying to format the drive.
The notebook was dropped a few months ago and the DVD-ROM drive got jammed in it, so i cant put the floppy in.

I made a boot cd-rom disc and installed the MS-DOS start-up files.
Grand that worked, however none of the format commands will work.

A:\>format C: /s

Invalid command line paramater specified. -OR-
Invalid drive specified.


Also when i try to delete the partition with the fresh install, the command is simply 'ignored' i press the button to format and it does nothing.



fdisk will work, brings me to:

1. Create partition
2. Delete partition
3. Select bootable partition
4. Rewrite master boot record

So i select delete, it askes me : Enter number of partitions to delete..

I say 1, it says you cannot do this in standard mode.


Any ideas/Advice?

Gosh

A clean install allows you to format the drive, see below

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp

jor el

Lydesia wrote:

I made a boot cd-rom disc and installed the MS-DOS start-up files.
Grand that worked, however none of the format commands will work.

A:\>format C: /s

Invalid command line paramater specified. -OR-
Invalid drive specified.

If you have formatted the partitions as NTFS then a DOS bootdisk won't see them and hence format c: won't work, as there will not be a c: drive there.

fdisk will work, brings me to:

1. Create partition
2. Delete partition
3. Select bootable partition
4. Rewrite master boot record

So i select delete, it askes me : Enter number of partitions to delete..

I say 1, it says you cannot do this in standard mode.

From what I remember of fdisk you cannot remove the primary partition, number 1, if you have an extended partition in place. Since you have two OSs installed I assume you have more than one partition, a C: and drive perhaps? If so, you need to first delete the logical dos drive in the extended partition, then delete the extended partition and then delete the primary partition. Exit fdisk and reboot and you're disk should be blank.

However, a clean install of XP will allow you to erase all partitions and create and format new ones. This would be the preferred option.

Chalk

try a linux boot disc and format the drive?

hshortt

If you have an XP CD, then put it on and turn on your PC. The setup will begin and you will be prompted during it for the partition information. At this point you can delete the previous partitions and format the drive to your desire.

The format command does not recognise that you have C drive so you are using FDisk. What version of FDisk are you using? You need to delete all partitions / extended partitions and start over by creating a primary partition.

Cheerio
Howard

Lydesia

jor el wrote:

If you have formatted the partitions as NTFS then a DOS bootdisk won't see them and hence format c: won't work, as there will not be a c: drive there.

From what I remember of fdisk you cannot remove the primary partition, number 1, if you have an extended partition in place. Since you have two OSs installed I assume you have more than one partition, a C: and drive perhaps? If so, you need to first delete the logical dos drive in the extended partition, then delete the extended partition and then delete the primary partition. Exit fdisk and reboot and you're disk should be blank.

However, a clean install of XP will allow you to erase all partitions and create and format new ones. This would be the preferred option.

Actually the 2 OS's are on the same partition!
And i tried to erase the partition win the fresh install but it simply ignored the key command. I pressed it and it did nothing.

jor el

You say the laptop was dropped on the ground. There could be more damage done than just the DVD stuck.

Whatever it is, the XP install should be able to wipe the partitions on a disk, if it doesn't then you're either doing something wrong, or the lappie is borked.

The weblink posted above give a good tutorial on installing. The important bits are Steps 5 and 6, I've linked the images here but I don't know if hotlinking will work from that site, anyway

and

If this doesn't work then you may have bigger problems, possibly unfixable ones. If it's ignoring your key-presses then maybe the keyboard, or at least some of the keys, be broken.

2 OSs on the same partition? Not a good idea IMO as they will share the same Program Files and Documents and Settings folders, possibly causing trouble for one or both of them. But that's not likely to be causing your problems.

unkel

Download the excellent Hiren's boot cd

tonky

Unkel, you would'nt have a working link to that iso handy?