Did I just screw myself over?

[dbernie41]

I have been trying to format this hard drive for a long time and finally today I went into fdisk and deleted ALL of the partitions and then created a new one.

I have/had??? Windows ME as the OS. and when I try to boot it just says "Verifying DMI pool files" or something close to that and it just sits there. Does this mean I totally wiped out everything including the OS?

To fix this is the only thing I would have to do is reinstall the OS? thanks!

 

[killians45]

Yep, try installing the o/s. Although I would think you would get a o/s not found error and not DMI... anyhow, when you removed the active partition you made it so the o/s could no longer be accessed.

 

[Lone Wolf]

When you deleted your partitions (including the active one), you essentially reset your MFT and the BIOS didn't know where to look for the OS files. What you need to do now is to set atleast one primary partition as "Active" so that you can install your Windows OS.

As for your verifying DMI pool... you can read MicroBell's response in this thread - 3rd one down.

http://www.techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20511

 

[killians45]

thought he already created an active partition though....

 

[dbernie41]

well thats one way for me to learn I guess

however, the OS was preinstalled on the hard drive and I have no CDs of it or anything. So do you I have to find a copy of an OS now? I made a ME start-up disk... but Im prety sure that wont help me

 

[killians45]

heh, yeah u need a copy of the o/s. I would get XP and not use ME

 

[jaksback]

win 2000 baby win 2000.

 

[killians45]

2k is good, too

 

[Lone Wolf]

thought he already created an active partition though....

Nope. Reading his posting again, i dont' see that he mentioned setting a partition as active. Using FDISK, after creating a primary, you still have to set it as "active".

 

[dbernie41]

Well I just want an old OS because this is just a crappy AMD K-6 400mhz computer that I have to mess with. I was thinking windows 95 or 98