Laptop - Reformat Hard Drive

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FerrisBuller

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 4, 2003
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I've been at this for two days with no luck... I'm a newbie with reformatting so any help would be greatly appreciated. I've got two OS on a Gateway Laptop P4-2200; XP & 2000. I've tried to "fdisk" or reformat in the C:>, but the system will not allow me. I have a Windows 98 Boot Up diskette; I plugged that in; set the boot menu for the A:> as the first drive; CD-Rom the second; and hard drive - third. Still no good. When I plug the 98 diskette in after restarting, it shows all the drivers but does not give me a C:> or an A:>. Just hangs in the DOS screen.
Can anyone give me a short set of instructions on how to reformat; I'd like to remove a quite a few unecessary files and start from scratch.

Thanks for any and all help...

Ferris
 
A Windows 98 start up disk will not help you format because fdisk does not recognize an NTFS file system hard drive which your laptop is. It only recognizes FAT32/FAT16 partitions.


So the other option is just put your Windows XP cd and boot from it. during the first phase of the setup you will get teh option to format teh partition ;)
 
bootup the laptop to either the 2000 cd or the XP cd and choose clean install option. it will format the drive and reinstall the OS of which ever cd your using to do the format with.

Yeah what maximus said.. he beat me to the punch...lol
 
Thanks Max and nomak... too late though; I was at work and by the time I logged in to your reply's the damage was already done. I was able to fdisk the hard drive and create a primary DOS partition. Now, I've tried to format the C drive with the following: C:>format C:\ No luck though. Keeps giving me "Bad command or file name". Any idea how I can format the drive and install the OS?
 
It's not too late to use the 2000 or XP disk, just pop it in and follow the bouncing ball
 
MajorDomo said:
It's not too late to use the 2000 or XP disk, just pop it in and follow the bouncing ball
Click to expand...
Major - I tried to use the XP CD; went into boot preferences and placed the CD as first drive recognized; I popped in the CD and came up with a DOS screen.... "missing operating system." This thing has got me perplexed... After I "fdisk" I restarted and went to reformat the hard drive; A:> C:>format C:\ - I get a dos screen with all the drivers being recognized and then - nothing. If I can't reformat the hard drive after "fdisk" then I'm thinking the boot-up diskette I'm using does not contain the "format" command on it?? If so, anyone have a clue as to where I can obtain a boot-up diskette with the format command?

If it matters; the primary DOS partition is NTFS.

Should I start from scratch and attempt to convert the drive to FAT32?

Thanks for all your patience; I've got some C4 I'm thinking of using out in the back; it would make for some great pics on [H]
 
i don't think u have set your boot options to boot from CD rom because if u did u will get a message saying "press any key to boot from CD" when the computer starts up and the Win 200 or XP cd is inserted.


double check
 
MaXimus666 said:
i don't think u have set your boot options to boot from CD rom because if u did u will get a message saying "press any key to boot from CD" when the computer starts up and the Win 200 or XP cd is inserted.


double check
Click to expand...

Understood... thanks again MaX.
 
aggiec05 said:
use the ultimate boot disc, you can format out any drive real easy with it along with tons of other nifty tools....http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Click to expand...

I'm on the download web page above... according to the web page if I'm running Windows I should download = "Self-extracting EXE Note: Please download this version if you are running Windows because it is compressed using 7Zip and is a good 10MB smaller than the ZIP version."

Aggie; can you point me to the "Self-extracting EXE file among the many web pages?
 
dude your easiest solution sits at your finger tips by using the xp cd or 2000 cd you haev access to .. just boot to them and you can format and reinstall OS with them,,, I really dont think you need set your bios to boot to cd first it will still prompt you to press any key to boot from cd if its a new enough machine.. if its older machine then you will haev to set boot order to boot from cd... I would do this and then learn about the UBCD later.. it gets very in depth and from sounds of it youre looking for simple and quick solution to your laptop problems...
 
nomak said:
dude your easiest solution sits at your finger tips by using the xp cd or 2000 cd you haev access to .. just boot to them and you can format and reinstall OS with them,,, I really dont think you need set your bios to boot to cd first it will still prompt you to press any key to boot from cd if its a new enough machine.. if its older machine then you will haev to set boot order to boot from cd... I would do this and then learn about the UBCD later.. it gets very in depth and from sounds of it youre looking for simple and quick solution to your laptop problems...
Click to expand...

Sounds good... I'll give it a shot when I get home... Thanks again nomak and everyone for the assistance.
 
MaXimus666 said:
A Windows 98 start up disk will not help you format because fdisk does not recognize an NTFS file system hard drive which your laptop is. It only recognizes FAT32/FAT16 partitions.


So the other option is just put your Windows XP cd and boot from it. during the first phase of the setup you will get teh option to format teh partition ;)
Click to expand...


You can delete non FAT partitions in Fdisk.


As said if your using XP now - XP's installer will let you do all you need to.
 
MaXimus666 said:
A Windows 98 start up disk will not help you format because fdisk does not recognize an NTFS file system hard drive which your laptop is. It only recognizes FAT32/FAT16 partitions.


So the other option is just put your Windows XP cd and boot from it. during the first phase of the setup you will get teh option to format teh partition ;)
Click to expand...

Which is strange because fdisk on my 98SE boot floppy WILL se an NTFS partition. I use it a lot here at work simply because of that ability.
 
fdisk will delete ntfs partitions.. its recognized as a non dos partition.. if you delete this then your ntfs is gone..it will delete fat, fat16 and fat 32 partitions as well.. then use your xp cd to do the rest.. simple as that.. but why use he fdisk in first place .. just use the cd from the get go and save yourself the exra work...
 
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