Cannot Format Entire Drive

[Guest]

XP Home originally on drive. I am trying to install Professional.
Compaq Presario, 2.2 ghz, 200 gig HD, 512 ram.
I am working on a computer for family friend. It was totally infested with
spyware, viri, you name it.
200 gig hard drive, 59 gig of space being used
I used a Win 98 boot disk to format.
I noticed that only the 59 gig was formatted, the other 130 gig would not
show up as being available.
I have removed all partitions and reinstalled still getting only 59 gig.
At the moment I have a 59 gig partition on the computer. I tried to make a
larger Logical drive but the computer says no space is available to do so.
I have jacked with computer for years now, but I am no expert by any means.
The friends who know more than me say that the 98 Boot disk is not the
problem.
Looking for suggestions.
Thanks....gary

 

[Alias]

Download the floppies for formatting from the HD's manufacturer's web site.
Use those to format and partition the drive. You might want to do a full
format, even though it will take hours, if the quick format doesn't show all
the space.
--
Alias

Use the Reply to Sender feature of your news reader program to email me.
Utiliza Responder al Remitente para mandarme un mail.

"phal" wrote

 

[Guest]

you should have booted with the xp home cd, noe that you have used a w98 boot
disk you will have some of the disc in fat32 ? and some of the disc in ntfs ?
possibly if this is the case then a win 98 disc will not be able to see it as
it does not see ntfs partitions, the easiest way is to boot from the xp cd
and follow the prompts to format the drive and then carry on as usual

 

[Bob I]

Boot from the XP cd.

 

[Alias]

you should have booted with the xp home cd,

After reading about two XPs, etc. after booting with the Home or Pro CD, I
disagree. The floppies from the HD's manufacturer's web site don't present
those possibilities.
--
Alias

Use the Reply to Sender feature of your news reader program to email me.
Utiliza Responder al Remitente para mandarme un mail.

noe that you have used a w98 boot

 

[Anna]

XP Home originally on drive. I am trying to install Professional.
Compaq Presario, 2.2 ghz, 200 gig HD, 512 ram.
I am working on a computer for family friend. It was totally infested with
spyware, viri, you name it.
200 gig hard drive, 59 gig of space being used
I used a Win 98 boot disk to format.
I noticed that only the 59 gig was formatted, the other 130 gig would not
show up as being available.
I have removed all partitions and reinstalled still getting only 59 gig.
At the moment I have a 59 gig partition on the computer. I tried to make a
larger Logical drive but the computer says no space is available to do so.
I have jacked with computer for years now, but I am no expert by any
means.
The friends who know more than me say that the 98 Boot disk is not the
problem.
Looking for suggestions.
Thanks....gary

Gary:
Is there some specific reason why you're using a Win98 startup disk to
partition/format the 200 GB HD?

Assuming there are no OEM issues involved here and you are using a retail
copy of Windows XP Professional -- if you're performing a fresh install of
XP as you apparently are, would it not be more advisable to boot up with the
XP installation CD, delete the partitions and make a fresh install XP?
Anna

P. S.
I'm sure you understand this -- but just in case you don't -- when you
delete the partition(s), *all* data on those partitions will be gone. So if
there's any data you or your friend's want/need on that 59 GB partition you
mention (or, for that matter on any other partition), please make sure
you've backed the data up *before* you begin deleting partitions.

 

[Guest]

I had a huge response written to your email took about 45 min to get it all
right. I hit post and the loging screen came up after login, it was all gone.
If I get lucky it will show up here sooner or later....gm

 

[Anna]

:

"Anna" wrote

I had a huge response written to your email took about 45 min to get it all
right. I hit post and the loging screen came up after login, it was all
gone.
If I get lucky it will show up here sooner or later....gm

Well, if you sent it to my "email" I'm afraid it's somewhere floating around
in the internet ether. And it's a "huge response"? It's that complicated an
issue?
Anna

 

[Guest]

I was just giving history on what had happened so far.
But anyway:
I just ran the Western Digital utility on the disk. Supposedly wrote zeros
to whole disk. I set partition and made it active, I am still showing only 59
gig.

Can I set partition and format the disk with Win XP disk only, no boot disk?
If so, could you tell me how?

 

[Guest]

Still looking for help. Can I format and set the partition with Win XP Pro
disk and no boot disk?

 

[Anna]

(snip)

I just ran the Western Digital utility on the disk. Supposedly wrote zeros
to whole disk. I set partition and made it active, I am still showing only
59 gig.

Can I set partition and format the disk with Win XP disk only, no boot
disk?
If so, could you tell me how?

phal (Gary?):
Well, the first thing to do is to use the Western Digital HD diagnostic
utility to determine if the disk is defective. Assuming it isn't...

You *can* (and should) partition/format the disk using the Windows XP
installation disk and subsequently install the OS. Do a Google search for
"install windows xp" and you'll be directed to many sites that give
step-by-step instructions for the installation process.
Anna

 

[Guest]

Well, I have looked and there is mention of a utility on XP for formatting,
but no exact info.
I just deleted my 59 gig partition.
removed the win 98 boot disk.
change boot bios to cd rom
inserted Win XP Pro
on set up screen right now. I Can:
Set Up windows XP now, press enter
Repair a windows XP installation using Recovery Console press R
quit setup
This is not where I want to be. This is the only screen I have seen thus far.
I have never seen an option to format or partition.
What am I doing wrong. Does it not tell you it is going to format?
gary

 

[Alan Smith]

If that is what you really mean. Did you really delete the partition?

If you deleted the partition then the partition is gone. You'll need to
create a new one.

 

[Steve N.]

Well, I have looked and there is mention of a utility on XP for formatting,
but no exact info.
I just deleted my 59 gig partition.
removed the win 98 boot disk.
change boot bios to cd rom
inserted Win XP Pro
on set up screen right now. I Can:
Set Up windows XP now, press enter
Repair a windows XP installation using Recovery Console press R
quit setup
This is not where I want to be. This is the only screen I have seen thus far.
I have never seen an option to format or partition.
What am I doing wrong. Does it not tell you it is going to format?
gary

At that screen hit Enter to set up Windows, you will get options to do
what you want.

Steve

 

[Guest]

It ended up that I used the win 98 disc to remove the partition and then
booted from the XP disc. It overwrote the 59 gig stuff and installed. The
partition being on the disc before the install was the problem...thanks to
all....gary

 

[Mike Fields]

Gary:
Is there some specific reason why you're using a Win98 startup disk to
partition/format the 200 GB HD?

Assuming there are no OEM issues involved here and you are using a retail
copy of Windows XP Professional -- if you're performing a fresh install of
XP as you apparently are, would it not be more advisable to boot up with the
XP installation CD, delete the partitions and make a fresh install XP?
Anna

P. S.
I'm sure you understand this -- but just in case you don't -- when you
delete the partition(s), *all* data on those partitions will be gone. So if
there's any data you or your friend's want/need on that 59 GB partition you
mention (or, for that matter on any other partition), please make sure
you've backed the data up *before* you begin deleting partitions.

If I remember correctly, XP pro before SP1 could only handle up to
137 gig or some such number. You might want to check
support.microsoft.com for more information on that issue.
After SP1, the limit was much higher.
If your XP Pro CD is not at least SP1, you may have an issue getting
the whole disk in one shot (although you could load XP into a 120
gig partition, download SP1 and SP2 then change the partition size with
drive manager up to include the full 200 gig (or add a second partition
for other storage).

mikey

 

[Lil' Dave]

Fdisk in Win 98/98SE is the culprit. Find something else to create a FAT32
partition and do the formatting of that parittion.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Problem: XP does not use any DOS during the boot process. If you format
with Windows 98, you will always get this problem.

Solution: Use the XP install CD to set up the partition as NTFS. FAT32
partitions are limited to 32GB. Also, you will need to use an XP install CD
that has at least Sevice Pack 1 (SP1) "slipstreamed" into the base CD files.
The original XP install CDs ccan not handle the larger drives (limited to
137GB)