More Hard Drive hijinx

[booj]

Hi again all,

I fdisked my hard drive today and then tried to install XP from boot disks – it got to the stage where you can format the partitions, but said there was another operating system on the partition. I DEFINITELY had deleted all partitions. Anyway, I chose to reformat the drive with NTFS format. It then got to the stage where it installs the system files – then I wanted to finish the installation from the CD (I have done it this way before..). The message boot from cd: appears and then the message ‘Missing operating System’. I had the CD drive as primary boot device in the BIOS – but its having none of it.

Could this be a hard drive issue, a cd drive issue, or a cd issue??

 

[floppybootstomp]

Could be either of the three faults you mention.

Why are you using boot disks if you have a WIN XP CD? There's no need, really.

Set the first boot device to CD-ROM in the Bios and see if you can boot from the XP CD. It doesn't matter what's on the HDD then, as XP will offer to format it during installation anyway.

To verify if your CD-ROM drive is working, boot with a WIN98 boot disk (selecting CD-ROM support), get to the A prompt, then select drive (whatever your CD-ROM drive is, probably E from the boot disk).

Then put a CD with some files on it in the drive and type in dir then hit return.

If it reads the contents of the CD, your drive's probably OK.

Is your jumper set OK on the CD drive, btw?

One other thing, I believe this is the third thread raised on this one particular issue.

For convenience sake, we'd apreciate it if you kept all posts within the same thread, as it can get confusing switching between several on the same topic. Thank you

 

[booj]

Thanks for the advice....I will stick to one thread...: )

The jumper is set ok - I only have one cd drive on the correctly to master - it is the only thing on the bus.

Yesterday I tried to completely erase my HD using KILLDISK. I tried this yesterday, and whilst trying to use the ‘Scan Partition’ function got a ‘error reading disk structure’ message. The process itself also didn’t complete, and seemed to crash at around 25% complete a number of times.

Preceeding this my pc crashed and refused to boot, and I got a CMOS check sum error. Does this sound like a knackered hard drive? I ve used simmtester to check it and that program says its ok.

Any advice before I splash out the hard-earned on new one….

 

[floppybootstomp]

No, it doesn't sound like a knackered hard drive. CMOS check sum error suggests you've lost your Bios settings, perhaps your motherboard battery is kaput, that may explain a few things.

Did you try reading a CD from the boot disk A prompt?

I have a small proggy that may help you with formatting your disk. I'll send you a PM in a short whiles with a d/l address, I'll host it for a short time, it fits on a floppy OK.

 

[floppybootstomp]

This was too long for a PM, so here it is:

Hi booj, download this program from Here. (750Kb)

Create a folder labelled 'Paragon' or something, then unzip all the files into that.

Copy all files within the Paragon folder onto a formatted floppy disk, and you'll have a bootable version of Paragon's Disk Manager V5.0

Boot with this disk, choose normal mode (if left, it will default to that anyway) ignore the memory error message, and eventually you'll arrive at a DOS type GUI window with PS2/serial mouse support.

Using the program, delete your hard drive, if you have multiple partitions, delete them all. Then use create to create a new hard disk.

Then format, the option is there to format in NTFS, amongst others. You can uncheck the option to scan surface, it will take a couple of hours if you do scan. Or, in view of you suspecting your HDD may be faulty, it may be an option to select the scan.

At the end of that, your entire Hard Disk should be cleanly formatted.

Another advantage of this programme is that it will reset your cluster sizes, should you so desire, without the need for formatting. Resetting cluster size will not affect the OS that's loaded.

Perhaps worth remembering if ever you need to do that.

Let us know how you get on.