reformat HDD

[frustrated]

I've created a boot disk according to instructions in
Windows 2000 help files. (4 boot disks on floppy) When I
try to reformat drive C: from the start menu it tells me I
can't reformat from there, so I put the first boot disk in
to boot on A and reformat from there. I get the following
error message: \ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded error
code 7
Any thoughts? Help greatly appreciated.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Instruct your BIOS to boot from your CD drive, then boot
with your Win2000 CD. Pretend to install Win2000, then
select "format" when given choice.

 

[Josef Stalin]

Instruct your BIOS to boot from your CD drive, then boot
with your Win2000 CD. Pretend to install Win2000, then
select "format" when given choice.

Call me dumb, but why not just create a simple boot up disk from
http://www.bootdisk.com/? (I went one step further and burned it to a CD
using Nero for the ultimate performance in boot up time) It takes just
several seconds to boot up. Then you can easily format. I'd go nuts
booting up from 4 floppies.

Uncle Joseph

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Call me dumb, but why not just create a simple boot up disk from
http://www.bootdisk.com/? (I went one step further and burned it to a CD
using Nero for the ultimate performance in boot up time) It takes just
several seconds to boot up. Then you can easily format. I'd go nuts
booting up from 4 floppies.

Uncle Joseph

Your method works fine most of the time and I use it
all the time. There is one exception: fdisk.exe will not
touch ntfs logical drives. For those you either need to
use the Win2000 CD, or a tool such as delpart.exe.

 

[Josef Stalin]

Your method works fine most of the time and I use it
all the time. There is one exception: fdisk.exe will not
touch ntfs logical drives. For those you either need to
use the Win2000 CD, or a tool such as delpart.exe.

Ahh, good point. Thank you for clarifying. Learn a little everyday.
On another note, I personally despise NTFS. I don't care what the
propaganda says.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Ahh, good point. Thank you for clarifying. Learn a little everyday.
On another note, I personally despise NTFS. I don't care what the
propaganda says.

Here is another one for you, and it ain't propaganda: If you run
Win2000, and if it is installed on a FAT/FAT32 partition, and if
you have some jobs scheduled by the Task Scheduler, then
all of these jobs will fail 18 . . 20 days from now. The problem
does not affect systems with NTFS partitions. I leave it to your
deductive skills to work out what's special 18 . . 20 days from now.

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Josef Stalin wrote:

On another note, I personally despise NTFS. I don't care what the
propaganda says.

What do you despise about NTFS? Just curious.

Steve

 

[Josef Stalin]

Josef Stalin wrote:



What do you despise about NTFS? Just curious.

I have found it to be very vulnerable to all sorts of pesky problems.

It sounds petty, but when I have a problem I want to be able to boot up with
a w98 boot up disk and be able to make repairs. I haven't been able to find
a DOS boot up disk that supports NTFS so far.

Support software for NTFS is few and far between. And if you can find them,
they're far more expensive.

If I recall correctly, NTFS has a lot of huge hidden files. I don't want
all that junk on the disk. I routinely back up my hard disks onto another
hard disk so I don't care if the hard disk dies.

Recovering an erased file from an NTFS system is much harder.

And forget that all crap that FAT32 can't support more than 32GB. I have a
131GB partition.

It *seems* to me that it crashes more often than FAT drives. That's not
scientific data; just my own empirical observations.

This is just my own personal opinion. I don't have years of hardware/system
experience like many of you do. My background is in software engineering.
I'm still wondering what I'm doing in a IT help desk. I guess it's better
than asking "plastic or paper?" or "fries with your burger?" all day long.

Uncle Josef

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have found it to be very vulnerable to all sorts of pesky problems.

It sounds petty, but when I have a problem I want to be able to boot up with
a w98 boot up disk and be able to make repairs. I haven't been able to find
a DOS boot up disk that supports NTFS so far.

Try http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/#download. It ain't DOS but it lets
you access any NTFS partition in read/write mode, and it's free.

And forget that all crap that FAT32 can't support more than 32GB. I have a
131GB partition.

Would you care to elaborate how you do it?

 

[Josef Stalin]

Try http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/#download. It ain't DOS but it lets
you access any NTFS partition in read/write mode, and it's free.

I think I recently had look-see at that. I'm just an old fart and I like a
command line. I was born using a command line and all these GUI's make me
sick.

have

Would you care to elaborate how you do it?

No secret. I'm an an open and honest guy, just like Gov. Bush. Partition
Magic. Great Product. Buy it today. You won't regret it.

Disclaimer: I used to be a software engineer up until relatively recently.
Most everything I've know I've learned here has been on this forum and
somewhat partly on the job (moronic boss). I make no claim to be an expert
at anything. Pegasus has been my greatest mentor.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I think I recently had look-see at that. I'm just an old fart and I like a
command line. I was born using a command line and all these GUI's make me
sick.

You'd better have another look. This is a bare-bones WinXP
CD, and as such it offers a Command Prompt that gives you
full access to anything located in c:\winnt\system32, plus,
of course, any of your own 16- or 32-bit tools you care include.
And, as I said, you have no hassles with NTFS permissions
or with long file names.

I was born in the good old mainframe days and I know my
Command Prompt commands inside out. In 95% of all cases
I will run circles around anyone using GUIs for file manipulation.
Even the simple command

del /s *.tmp

is way beyond the capabilities of Windows Explorer.

No secret. I'm an an open and honest guy, just like Gov. Bush. Partition
Magic. Great Product. Buy it today. You won't regret it.

I've used PQMagic for many years, even though my current copy
is somewhat dated. Are you saying that the latest copy of PQMagic
lets you create FAT32 partitions > 32 GBytes?

AFAIR, the cluster size for a 32 GByte FAT32 partition is
32kBytes. Does this mean that your 131 GByte FAT32 partition
uses 128 kByte clusters? If so then I expect a great amount of
slack, especially in the Temporary Internet Files where my
average file size is around 700 bytes. Here is the amount of disk
space consumed by 2000 such files:

Space used on my NTFS partition: 1.4 MBytes
Space used on a FAT32 partition: 64 MBytes
Space used on your 128 GByte FAT32 partition: 128 MBytes

A tad wasteful . . .

 

[Josef Stalin]

You'd better have another look. This is a bare-bones WinXP
CD, and as such it offers a Command Prompt that gives you
full access to anything located in c:\winnt\system32, plus,
of course, any of your own 16- or 32-bit tools you care include.
And, as I said, you have no hassles with NTFS permissions
or with long file names.

This sounds very interesting. I'm going to have to investigate this. Thank
you for the info.

I was born in the good old mainframe days and I know my
Command Prompt commands inside out. In 95% of all cases
I will run circles around anyone using GUIs for file manipulation.
Even the simple command

del /s *.tmp

is way beyond the capabilities of Windows Explorer.



I've used PQMagic for many years, even though my current copy
is somewhat dated. Are you saying that the latest copy of PQMagic
lets you create FAT32 partitions > 32 GBytes?

Yes, indeed. I was quite surprised myself.

AFAIR, the cluster size for a 32 GByte FAT32 partition is
32kBytes. Does this mean that your 131 GByte FAT32 partition
uses 128 kByte clusters?

No. 32K clusters.

If so then I expect a great amount of
slack, especially in the Temporary Internet Files where my
average file size is around 700 bytes. Here is the amount of disk
space consumed by 2000 such files:

Space used on my NTFS partition: 1.4 MBytes
Space used on a FAT32 partition: 64 MBytes
Space used on your 128 GByte FAT32 partition: 128 MBytes

A tad wasteful . . .

Perhaps, but I couldn't care less. I blow away the entire Temporary
Internet File directory structure each time the computer boots up. So many
web pages change so frequently that they have to be reloaded anyway and I'm
on a high speed connection. For the cookies I want to save, I use Mozilla.
Mozilla's cache doesn't save each web page as a separate file so slack space
is not of any concern. I use Internet Explorer as the browser of last
resort.

Uncle Josef