Re-Format Hard Disk Freeware

[John]

I purchased a PC off Ebay. The previous owner had installed XP Pro on it
for me. There was no re-installation disk XP Pro with the PC. It's turned
out that the system is hopelessly corrupted now, maybe my fault. I've
returned to an older P11 PC and W98 in the meantime. How do I format the
hard-drive ? The usual Dos comands get varying responses, using a Boot
Floppy, and trying with direct Dos Commands. 'Format C:'. It seems I need an
software external programme that will over-ride the XP Pro system. Does
anybody know of one. The easy Formatting I use with W98 clearly does'nt work
with XP. I'm not a PC wizard, but can format my P11 quite easily, and have
re-intalled W98 many times after a clean format. . The Athlon PC has more
RAM, and a DVD/CDRW Combo drive. My P11 has a separate CDRW & CD drive.

I would like to install W98, until I can afford to buy XP Home.

Many Thanks for any clear assistance or alternative suggestions.

John

 

[John Corliss]

I purchased a PC off Ebay. The previous owner had installed XP Pro on it
for me. There was no re-installation disk XP Pro with the PC. It's turned
out that the system is hopelessly corrupted now, maybe my fault. I've
returned to an older P11 PC and W98 in the meantime. How do I format the
hard-drive ? The usual Dos comands get varying responses, using a Boot
Floppy, and trying with direct Dos Commands. 'Format C:'. It seems I need an
software external programme that will over-ride the XP Pro system. Does
anybody know of one. The easy Formatting I use with W98 clearly does'nt work
with XP. I'm not a PC wizard, but can format my P11 quite easily, and have
re-intalled W98 many times after a clean format. . The Athlon PC has more
RAM, and a DVD/CDRW Combo drive. My P11 has a separate CDRW & CD drive.

I would like to install W98, until I can afford to buy XP Home.

Many Thanks for any clear assistance or alternative suggestions.

John,
You might want to try posting your question to one of these newsgroups:


or go to this site:

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/default.mspx

and pick out the appropriate group. You'll get better and faster answers
that way.

--
Regards from John Corliss
My current killfile: aafuss, Chrissy Cruiser, Slowhand Hussein and others.
No adware, cdware, commercial software, crippleware, demoware, nagware,
PROmotionware, shareware, spyware, time-limited software, trialware,
viruses or warez please.

 

[Laurent Herve]

Get a copy of FREE DOS, because the fdisk shipped with it
is the best and the fastest. You should be able to remove all
existing partition with that.
If not, get a linux on CD (DSL, Knoppix, whatever) maybe also
tom's root boot floppy , -any linux floppy distro with the "dd"
command (i didin't really check if it exist)
The main point is once you have the "dd" command availabe
on linux, nothing can resist. Open a root shell and enter

$> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda (optional bs options)

and it will zeroing your disk.

also this one is good, -jus see it

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/brain

(from http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/blog/?p=5)

last but not least, a nice tool to have : UBCD...
(many tools on 1 cd)

laurent

 

[old jon]

I purchased a PC off Ebay. The previous owner had installed XP Pro on it
for me. There was no re-installation disk XP Pro with the PC. It's turned
out that the system is hopelessly corrupted now, maybe my fault. I've
returned to an older P11 PC and W98 in the meantime. How do I format the
hard-drive ? The usual Dos comands get varying responses, using a Boot
Floppy, and trying with direct Dos Commands. 'Format C:'. It seems I need
an
software external programme that will over-ride the XP Pro system. Does
anybody know of one. The easy Formatting I use with W98 clearly does'nt
work
with XP. I'm not a PC wizard, but can format my P11 quite easily, and have
re-intalled W98 many times after a clean format. . The Athlon PC has more
RAM, and a DVD/CDRW Combo drive. My P11 has a separate CDRW & CD drive.

I would like to install W98, until I can afford to buy XP Home.

Many Thanks for any clear assistance or alternative suggestions.

John

Get yourself a WinME floppy disk. www.bootdisk.com
Set the BIOS to boot the floppy first. And do `Format C:`. That should fix
it.
bw..OJ

 

[jmatt]

Another thought John, If you can get into Safe mode, search to see if
you have i386, if you do, you have XP available.

Or, take the drive out, jumper it as slave & hook it to your other
comp, no need to bolt it in, leave it hanging loose, cabled to your 98
drive.

Let me know & we can progress into a repair process for you.

 

[jmatt]

Also, you may have to jumper the 98 drive to > master with slave.

 

[Laurent Herve]

Also, you may have to jumper the 98 drive to > master with slave.

Yep; the only weird thing in that story is that WIn XP is well known
to NEVER corrupt ! it's true, is not a tale (i'm not using XP nor ntfs,
but never corrupted since computer bought)

To the -fatidic- "format c:" command : ms-dos format will only
work on nice partitions (i guess you should google for "format
NTFS"). If format don't work, you need either to find a formating
tool suited for NTFS, or you need to REMOVE partitions
and CREATE new ones. Therefore fdisk comes handly.
But as i said, the freedos fdisk has the immense advantage to
not doing the never ending partition check, spending the whole
night with partitionning.

laurent

 

[jmatt]

John, these will clean up NTFS partitions if needed, but if we can save
your XP install, you will be better off.

WIPE OUT
http://www.lurkhere.com/~nicefiles/index.html
Freeware.
WIPE OUT: as the name implies, this utility will absolutely WIPE your
hard drive. For those
times when an industrial strength cleaner is needed to remove any pesky
files Fdisk may have
left behind. A readme file is included in the zip file. WARNING...WIPE
OUT will remove ALL data
from the Hard Drive.

DIRECTIONS

1- Unzip file
2- Copy WIPEOUT to a Win9x boot disk
3- Boot with Win9x disk
4- At the A:\> type "wipeout c: /nq /np" (no quotes)
/nq = no queries - you will not be asked if you are sure.
/np = no partitions - this will overwrite the MBR

Press Enter.

Now run fdisk to set up partitions.
When done, reboot & format.

Or, use your XP cd.

=======================================

DELPART
http://www.2e.org/files.htm
http://www.bootdisk.com
http://www.michalferber.com/downloads.asp
Delpart.exe From NT 3.51, this utility can delete extended NTFS, Lilo,
and just about any other type of partition .
DELPART is a DOS based utility that will remove NTFS partitions from
hard drives. FDISK is unable to remove some types of NTFS partitions.
DELPART can wipe clean a hard drive, then you can use FDISK to create
partitions normally.

Use a Windows 98/Me startup disk to delete the non-dos partition.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/delete_nondos_partition.htm

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Hi John!



I would try: Make a BootFloppy with your W98.
Install Ranish PART (Free) on it.
Boot that on the faulty PC. Start Ranish Partition Manager....

Delete all Partitions you see, (difficult to use program IMO, for
unexperienced).
Finish Ranish.

RESET - boot, and then you must partition it with fdisk for example.
You can also take Ranish again.

Reset- boot

Format C: /u
should be on the disquette you made with windows98, but you have only
FAT16 or 32 then, no NTFS. If you want to use WinXP, it is better you
just wipe the HD and then booting with the WINXP-CD, respective Win98,
too



You can also try the whole thing I described above with fdisk on the
boot disk, but NTFS (WinNT, 2000, XP) partitions might not be eraseable
:-(, therefore Ranish. If you just have the Win98 BootCD then I can
understand your Problem. Win98 does not have a capable setup, it is
like the DOS-Setup. You ought to make partitions with Ranish or Fdisk,
then.

If you are unexperienced, it is better just wipe everything with
ranish. And partition with Fdisk!



Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Kenny]

Get a Win98 Startup floppy and boot from it. Use FDISK first to delete then
recreate the partition/s then the FORMAT command. If installing XP you can
do with out the FORMAT, just set BIOS to boot from CD with XP CD in and
follow the prompts from there.

 

[Maynard Man]

John, Get dban's nuke boot. It comes free with eraser. It is a unix program.
My guess is that your winxp is in NTFS which DOS will not recognise. The
Win9x or me format tool will n ot see the partions and Fdisk may or may not
remove them. Nuke boot will totally recover the disk space, then you can
boot from your 9x cd.
Good Luck

 

[Morten Skarstad]

I would try: Make a BootFloppy with your W98.
Install Ranish PART (Free) on it.

Seconded. It hasn't been updated in ages, but it is perfectly usable for
such jobs. http://www.ranish.com/part

You can also try the whole thing I described above with fdisk on the
boot disk, but NTFS (WinNT, 2000, XP) partitions might not be
eraseable :-(

The problem you are describing is that MS fdisk is uncapable of deleting
non-FAT logical partitions. This is just one of several shortcomings. In
short: Don't bother using it.

If you are unexperienced, it is better just wipe everything with
ranish. And partition with Fdisk!

Why partition with fdisk? Ranish is IMO more intuitive, and unlike fdisk: It
works.

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Why partition with fdisk? Ranish is IMO more intuitive, and unlike
fdisk: It works.

Sure, but I came to the clue, that he have only Windows98. HD for
windows98, prepared with a Win98 Bootdisk are 100% O.K. and he can use
FAT32, too. Though I would suggest, a smaller Fat16 (1000MB) for the
system and the rest of the HD in Fat32 Partitions, with smaller
clusters then this big chunks of 16 or even 32KB with Fat16, as he
needs.



Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Urban Ek]

My guess is that your winxp is in NTFS which DOS will not recognise. The
Win9x or me format tool will n ot see the partions and Fdisk may or may not
remove them. Nuke boot will totally recover the disk space, then you can
boot from your 9x cd.

No need to use UNIX tools for that. If deleting partitions is all that
nukeboot does, adding delpart to a Windows 98 bootdisk might be
easier.

A Google for "delpart.exe" gives 2600 hits, but ty for example
http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm

 

[Ardent]

X-No-Archive: yes

The usual Dos comands get varying responses, using a Boot
Floppy, and trying with direct Dos Commands. 'Format C:'. It seems I need an
software external programme that will over-ride the XP Pro system

Get a copy of slate.zip, boot from a floppy and run slate 1, that is
the id for the first hard disk.

ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/diskutil/slate10.zip

Slate will remove all the partition information and the hard disk will
appear to be like when it was just purchased. Now you can create the
partitions and install Win98.

--
Sandy Archer
Reply to newsgroup only

For links to Harddisk management freeware
http:/members.tripod.com/~diligent/harddisk.htm

 

[John]

Many thanks to All of you who responded to my lack of techno wisdom. From
all that you wrote, I think I can resolve my problem, quite easily. This
newsgroup never fails to astound me in its helpfulness and willingness to
assist those of us less technically aware. Thanks Again. John