Mission Impossible (Computer problem, longish)

Factual Questions
1

Okies. Of the 5 puters in my house right now, 2 work.
I am slowly but surely remedying this. Things just slowed down again. I will try and explain as clearly as possible my situation.

[ul]
[li]Puter is a PII 233 64ram 4 ‘n’ a bit gig HD laptop.[/li][li]Puter has no, I repeat, no floppy. This is crucial to the discussion sigh No network card either, so don’t suggest a netinstall :wink: It does however have a CD player, and can be booted from CD.[/li][li]CD player doesn’t play RWs, so any time I try something new it costs me a whole CD grr doh[/li][/ul]
I think thats all the starting info needed.

Here is what happened. Lovely working puter, bored Iteki, fresh install for that clean feeling. Formatted, and started installing my OS from one of my backup copys of my regular OS CD. Half way (well more like 75%) through, the install craps out. The CD was damaged and I hadn’t noticed. Thankfully this is why we make backups :slight_smile:

I pop out the CD and reboot the machine. Oh RUT RO! I start getting non-system disk errors and can’t boot the puter at all. This is probably due to me having 75% of Windows installed.
So far no problem, I reach calmly for my nice shiny Win98 boot-disk that I keep for such events, and calmly proceed to insert it into… :smack: Yeah, thats right, no diskette station.

Again, no problem, altho I must admit I am starting to sweat a little. I go into BIOS and switch my boot priority so that I have it check the CD first, pop in my proper origional OS CD and power up. No boot. No damned boot… For some reason, my OS CD isn’t bootable. I proceed to experiment with making bootable CDs on my burner (conveniently never noticing the wizard marked “Bootable CDs”). None of this is particularly relevant, I mention it merely to let you know what I have already done so that it not be suggested as a possible remedy :slight_smile:

Cue three weeks of moping around the house with a puss on me because my favourite computer in the world, my one and only laptop, is banjaxed. This time is spent pricing diskette drives online for my laptop. They ain’t cheap.
Then one day, I get a brainstorm. Ok, my various attempts at bootable CDs didn’t work, but maybe it’s not my bios/cd, maybe its really just the CDs weren’t bootable. I proceed to attempt to boot from every CD in the house I can find. Being a clever little Iteki (I thought then), I started with the Compaq restore CD’s I have for two of my desktops. One screamed at me immediatly that this computer (the laptop) was not a Compaq, but the other THANK GOD allowed me to struggle into DOS. It also installed a RAMDrive and gave me access to my CD (way down on N: so their users can’t come across it accidently).

Now, I have access to my CD, I try to install my OS. It craps out directly after the initial “preparing setup wizard” reaches 100%. I forget why this is, but at any rate I have in the meantime gotten a REAL boot CD from my computer store and am happily booting to DOS normally without the non-system-disk-errors. All is happy and smiley. I format, scandisk, all that stuff, and proceed to install my OS. Unfortunatly I now start getting information from Windows about there being an area of the HD that it can’t access, that I must have anti-virus software installed etc. Checked, nope. Checked bios, nope. Finally in a fit of irritation I run an Fdisk, intending to remove my totally normal 1 gig partition which I flat out know wasn’t the problem.

My jaw drops. There, before my eyes in fdisk is a 104 meg non-dos partition… Known from that instant as “The Mystery Partition” I am completely unable to remove it. In fact, I can’t remove any damed partitions at all. I get error writing to hard-disk (when using the english lang program “DelPart”) and error reading from hard-disk (when using fdisk from my swedish boot-disk).
I know, KNOW, in my heart that it is the Compaq CD that has put it there. That Mystery Partition. It must be, it was never there before. I also know that those 104 megs are the bits that my OS is telling me it can’t read.

So my dear dopers. Can you solve this impossible mission?
Further information is available on request. The windows in question is WinME. Anyone wanting to discuss or refer to my choice of OS can meet me in the Pit. Thank you in advance :smiley:

2

you need whats called a DEBUG. This will wipe your hdd clean of partitions. There is a script you have to type after you run the debug command.
try looking here http://www.firmware.com/support/bios/hdclear.htm

3

Hmmm GopherGodso this would be a program I would need to buy and run?
Is there a specific one for my bios, or are there “generic” ones?
I am gone to look up more info on this, meantime people can feel free to come with more suggestions, winning response gets their leetness proclaimed in my sig for a month :wink:

4

Ok, read up a little on that…
I did the script as it was there. No dice, all 3 partitions (c: d: and mystery partition) remain viewable in fdisk.

Tried one at microsofts site. No dice there either. Testing one more, but suspect I will be non-functional on 3 for 3.

5

OK, what OS are we talking about? I’ve found that Win95’s FDISK prog won’t remove Win98 partitions (it had a weird volume name that I couldn’t type in when you try to remove it). What OS is on the bootable CD? I’d highly recommend getting Partition Magic to deal with the rogue partition. Failing that you can try to determine the make of your hard drive and then go to that vendor’s site and download the HD tools disk that most of them have. You’d have to make another bootable cd that includes the tools though. You may have to low level format to get rid of the partition but I haven’t had to do that in years.

Oh, and I think Win9x can “lock” the hard drive. From the DOS prompt you can type “UNLOCK C:”.

6

Another suggestion: If you manage to boot to DOS again and get a good partition formatted, copy the install files for your desired OS to a directory on your hard drive and install from there. If you can afford the space leave them there for easy access in the future.

7

Iteki,

This should do the trick. It doesn’t worry about any partitioning information and just fills the drive with zeros up to the drive’s physical capacity. There are other options besides zero-fill, so one of them should work for you.

8

Partition Resizer is a free partition manager. I’ve used it many times and have been happy with it. It should be able to remove/resize etc. your partitions assuming your partition table isn’t hosed.

If you want to transfer files to the PC, I would suggest using a simple cable connect program. Payware includes LapLink. Freeware includes File Maven. Some MS-DOS/MS-Windows come with doslink. Use a null modem serial cable or a data parallel cable. (I get my data parallel cables for $1 from Goodwill. Easiest to spot are the yellow ones.) File Maven and Laplink have the ability to install themselves remotely on the floppy-less computer over the cable. If a machine has no network card or floppy you really need something like this.

9

I’m pretty sure the Compaq restore cds create their own partition for compaq diag tools on the hard drive and this is what you are now seeing.

I know this was the case when I used the system disks to setup a compaq with a smartraid controller a a couple years ago.

The others have made good suggestions. Also, you could make a linux bootable cd and use linux fdisk to wipe out your partitions. linux is pretty good about recognizing other partition types.

10

Breaknrun, that is one of the thoughts I keep having, but I want to steer clear of linux right now. Time and a place for everything so to speak. It is there as my “last ditch effort” though.

Meantime I am collecting all these suggestions of partitioning, zero writing tools etc and am going to make one big fat CD with them all on it. The CD will probably weight about 2 megs :wink:

Keep em coming folks!

11

There is always sticking the drive in another machine and seeing if you can do anything to it in Windows or using a boot floppy.

12

Update.

I have tried a number of different tools including IBMs
own (its a travelstar HD) Zap and Wipe zero-fill, low level format
applications. They too give me an error about being unable to write to the disk. I can copy files over to C: etc, thats not an issue. I just cant remove that partition and install my OS.

I have run a scandisk on the disk surface, it says zero errors.

Still dying for help!!

13

If a program tells you that it cannot write to the HDD, it means it doesn’t know how to access the controller. This is particularly true of low level formatters since they are likely need to directly control the HDD controller, bypassing the BIOS.

I also suggest the use of one of the Linux distro’s disk partition utility. No you don’t need to set up 'nix, you just need to wipe out all the partitions.

14

Rather than start a new thread I thought I would revive this one.
Hope that is OK. Urban Ranger, if you are still around (somone else if not) can you give me a bit of a “talk through” on using the distros partition utility? I don’t know what to look for even. I have a CD here that is Mandrake (early version, like 7 or so?) but it is not bootable. Can I boot using my boot-cd (a win98 boot cd) and get into dos and then search to the files and run them?

I still want help, I love this laptop and my latest $10 acquisition has been completely and utterly stolen by MrsIteki so I remain laptopless (no, the $10 isn’t a typo).

15

Umm, there is usually a setting in the BIOS to prevent writing to the boot sector and sometimes the partition table. It’s an anti-virus setting. Go into your BIOs and look for anti-virus settings or boot sector protection and turn them off, for the time being.

Oh, and go get a floppy drive. My local thrift stores have them for <$2.

16
  1. It’s not the BIOS setting.
  2. You sure your store has floppy drives for laptops for less than 2 bucks? If you mean adapting a regular floppy drive to use with the laptop then bring it on, I have a 486 I can slaughter.
17

Might be cheaper to get an adapter to put the laptop hard drive into a desktop. Then you can boot the desktop and get the hard drive all figured out, then put it back in the laptop. Adapter kits for the mini laptop connectors to a desktop hard drive go for in the neighborhood of 10 bucks or so (I think).

If it were my computer, this is what I would do.

  1. Install the laptop HD in a desktop that has a BIOS new enough to recognize the entire disk drive size (the 486 probably won’t cut it).

  2. Boot from my linux floppies and use the linux fdisk to get rid of all of those weird partitions. The dos fdisk just can’t handle this.

  3. pause for a brief moment to wave to opal

  4. boot from a win98 floppy and use that to fdisk and format the drive.

  5. Copy the windows CD to the hard drive

  6. Install windows from the hard drive

  7. copy all of the driver disks the laptop needs to the hard drive

  8. take the hard drive out of the desktop and put it in the laptop

  9. reboot about a million times as windows recognizes each change in hardware

18

that nick sure bodes well :slight_smile:

I live in a very small town in europe, and just don’t have any cash to put out on this, unfortunatly. My last attempts stopped because I ran out of CD-Rs if you can believe that! So unfortunatly attaching the HD to a desktop isn’t an option. If only I could boot from a USB floppy that would be cool.

Can I make a linux-floppy to a bootable CD and do that? I have a win98-floppy as bootable CD that is a lifesaver.

19

No, you can’t read a linux CD from dos, unfortunately. Any way you can get another Linux CD?

If you have another PC with a CD burner, this should be easy to fix. NT 3.5 used to come with a utility called delpart. It deletes partitions regardless of type. Why MS stopped including it with their resource kits I’ll never know. But if you google “delpart download” there are tons of places to download it from. If you can burn yourself a bootable CD and add that file to it, you should be all set. Most CD writing software has the ability to make bootable CD’s.

Otherwise, use any Linux distro boot CD. At some point during the install, there will be an option to partition the disk. Use their utility to remove all partitions, then cancel out of the install and reboot. (Although, the linux fdisk utility is really very very easy to use, especially if all you want to do is delete the partitions.)

20

It sounds like the disk may have a ‘boot manager’ of sort installed which will allow the bios to reconize a larger harddrive then the bios wants to.

I would go to the HD manufactures web page and look for such a utility and the removal instructions. If you try to remove it some other way the disk may need to be low level formatted to make it usable.