format question

[Kevin Oye]

This does not have to do with VISTA but I am sure someone can help me.

I am trying to format an old hard drive with my WIN 98 boot up disk. When I
get into the DOS A: prompt it will not see my C Drive, which is the hard
drive.

All I want to do is wipe that hard drive clean? Can I do it? or am I out of
luck until I get a new operating system on it. I have Windows 2000 on the
PC but now I can't get boot into that now as it keeps looking for the start
up disk

Any commands I can use? I am not the best with DOS.

thanks

Kevin

 

[Bob Campbell]

This does not have to do with VISTA but I am sure someone can help me.

I am trying to format an old hard drive with my WIN 98 boot up disk. When
I get into the DOS A: prompt it will not see my C Drive, which is the hard
drive.

All I want to do is wipe that hard drive clean? Can I do it? or am I out
of luck until I get a new operating system on it. I have Windows 2000 on
the PC but now I can't get boot into that now as it keeps looking for the
start up disk

Sounds like the drive is currently formatted with NTFS, which your Win98
Boot disk isn't going to see. Run FDISK at your A: prompt and delete the
existing partition, then create a new one. Reboot again with your Win98
boot disk and you should then be able to format it.

 

[Kevin Oye]

it tells me "no fixed disks are present"

never seen that before?

 

[the wharf rat]

I am trying to format an old hard drive with my WIN 98 boot up disk. When I
get into the DOS A: prompt it will not see my C Drive, which is the hard
drive.

Check the jumpers. Old IDE drives had to be set for "master" or
"slave" roles. If it's the only drive move the jumper to the master spot.

Also, use the "fdisk" command to make new partitions. It's in
windows\system32 somewhere I think.

 

[Kevin Oye]

jumper has not changed in 10 years. It has always been on Master. I was
just running 2000 on this PC an hour ago. Then I put this stupid boot disk
in, instaed of typing in CMD for the DOS prompt. Now I can't WIN 2000 back.

 

[Bob Campbell]

it tells me "no fixed disks are present"

never seen that before?

Then either the drive is really dead or it is connected or jumpered wrong.
What kind of drive is it? Master/Slave jumpers set correctly? Does the
computer BIOS see it?

 

[Kevin Oye]

BIOS does see it as the primary master

 

[Kevin Oye]

I just figired it out. I had to change something in the CMOS. It is now
formatting. thanks for your help.

I will probably be back with Vista questions.

 

[Bob Campbell]

BIOS does see it as the primary master

Maybe the MBR is just hosed. Try FDISK /MBR from your A: prompt. Then
run FDISK normally again.

 

[ray]

This does not have to do with VISTA but I am sure someone can help me.

I am trying to format an old hard drive with my WIN 98 boot up disk.
When I get into the DOS A: prompt it will not see my C Drive, which is
the hard drive.

All I want to do is wipe that hard drive clean? Can I do it? or am I
out of luck until I get a new operating system on it. I have Windows
2000 on the PC but now I can't get boot into that now as it keeps
looking for the start up disk

Any commands I can use? I am not the best with DOS.

thanks

Kevin

You could certainly boot a Linux Live CD - the 'puppy' iso is 50mb or
less - and reformat quite easily.