help with formatting hd
- Thread starter Holydirt
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What to do, what to do...
I KNOW, I KNOW! ASK FOR HELP ON TEH WWW.TECH-FORUMS.NET! Damn, one step ahead of us.
Ok, first off, if you're running 98, you should be able to create a boot disk. Do this, do a search on your computer for creating a boot disk and it should give you a wizard. Once you have this the fun begins.
Take all other discs out of your computer and insert the floppy boot disk. Then turn it on. It should boot to the floppy and ask you if you need cd-drive support, you don't need it. Then it will continue to boot and pretty soon you will have a blank command prompt.
First thing you do is type in fdisk then a paragraph or two will come up asking if you want large disk support, just press Y there will be 4 options, I'm not quite sure what they are from my memory, but you want to first select the fourth option. It will show you all partitions on your hard drive. If you only have one partition that's fine, if you have more then one then you will want to get out of that screen, and go to the DELETE partion options. Then delete the bad partition.
If you only have one partition on your hard drive, ignore that last part. You will exit fdisk and the prompt will be back on. Just type in format c: and it will ask you if you're sure, and all this other crap. Just say yes, blah blah blah. If your hard drive is pretty big it will take a while. It takes me about 40 minutes to format my hard drive, it's a 7,200 rpm seagate 80gb. The smaller the drive the faster it will go.
While this is going on it would be a good idea to get all the discs together that contain your drivers on it. The main drivers you need will be VIDEO, SOUND, and if you use a modem to connect to the internet, dial-up, you will need the driver for that. Windows will detect everything else.
After it is done reformatting you will need to restart. While your computer is off remove the floppy disk and turn the computer on and insert your windows intallation disk and take it from there. After you install windows your video will look quite crappy. You will need to install your video driver. Then sound driver, then modem driver. If you have any other hardware that requires a driver you may want to install that too. For instance my computer has a wireless card in it, so in order to get on the internet I have to install the driver for that first. I don't have a modem in my computer so I don't need to install a driver for that. All I have to install is my soundcard driver and video card driver, and my wi-fi card.
I hope this helped, you may want to print it out for reference while you're doing it. And by the way, if you need more help I am always on AIM: bandageboyfxb or MSN: bandage_boy@msn.com just get on and ask if you need some help.
I KNOW, I KNOW! ASK FOR HELP ON TEH WWW.TECH-FORUMS.NET! Damn, one step ahead of us.
Ok, first off, if you're running 98, you should be able to create a boot disk. Do this, do a search on your computer for creating a boot disk and it should give you a wizard. Once you have this the fun begins.
Take all other discs out of your computer and insert the floppy boot disk. Then turn it on. It should boot to the floppy and ask you if you need cd-drive support, you don't need it. Then it will continue to boot and pretty soon you will have a blank command prompt.
First thing you do is type in fdisk then a paragraph or two will come up asking if you want large disk support, just press Y there will be 4 options, I'm not quite sure what they are from my memory, but you want to first select the fourth option. It will show you all partitions on your hard drive. If you only have one partition that's fine, if you have more then one then you will want to get out of that screen, and go to the DELETE partion options. Then delete the bad partition.
If you only have one partition on your hard drive, ignore that last part. You will exit fdisk and the prompt will be back on. Just type in format c: and it will ask you if you're sure, and all this other crap. Just say yes, blah blah blah. If your hard drive is pretty big it will take a while. It takes me about 40 minutes to format my hard drive, it's a 7,200 rpm seagate 80gb. The smaller the drive the faster it will go.
While this is going on it would be a good idea to get all the discs together that contain your drivers on it. The main drivers you need will be VIDEO, SOUND, and if you use a modem to connect to the internet, dial-up, you will need the driver for that. Windows will detect everything else.
After it is done reformatting you will need to restart. While your computer is off remove the floppy disk and turn the computer on and insert your windows intallation disk and take it from there. After you install windows your video will look quite crappy. You will need to install your video driver. Then sound driver, then modem driver. If you have any other hardware that requires a driver you may want to install that too. For instance my computer has a wireless card in it, so in order to get on the internet I have to install the driver for that first. I don't have a modem in my computer so I don't need to install a driver for that. All I have to install is my soundcard driver and video card driver, and my wi-fi card.
I hope this helped, you may want to print it out for reference while you're doing it. And by the way, if you need more help I am always on AIM: bandageboyfxb or MSN: bandage_boy@msn.com just get on and ask if you need some help.
I just saw that you have Windows XP. That doesn't matter. Just go to this website: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm and download the Windows 98SE bootdisk, the OEM one. Then follow the wizard and create the disk. I know you're thinking "I have XP, why would I want a 98se bootdisk" Well because the O/S has nothing to do with it. It will bring up a command prompt with format and fdisk on it, that's all you need. After you're done with that you can install your O/S again from a CD.
Holydirt said:
holydirt since you have winXP i assume you have NTFS partition. DOS cannot access NTFS. like i said eairlier holydirt use winXP CD to partition and format. pop the CD in and boot from CD. if you cannot boot make the winXP install diskettes. it creates on 6 floppies and boot from floppy.
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