Member Avatar for terry@fcr

(I have some questions here about hard drives and software reformatting hard drives. I am a novice and have no education in computers other than self learning)

Awhile back I had what I thought was a hard drive failure. My hard drive went corrupt during the night running maintenance. It was frozen when I got to work the next morning, and it wouldnt boot after a manual shut down and said no operating system found (os). When I got out my 566ir disk to reformat, everything seemed normal at first until it began and it wouldnt record any files to the drive. I kept seeing the "cant create check direct" or something to that extent and it ran through it in about 15 seconds and never recorded anything. I figured it was junk because the hard drive had been making sounds before it went out, grinding sounds. So, I pulled out a slave drive from one of our other computers, set the jumpers for primary drive, tried to reformat it, same thing happened. I ended up getting a 1 gig hard drive from an old computer and it reformatted off the format disk just like normal. Problem with that was I didnt have much space. I went in and cleaned and got rid of alot of windows options that I didnt use etc, but was still left with not much space. I tried to delete the windows temp files from installation and the uninstallation files for 98 but it never freed any space and acted funny when trying to delete them off of the disk cleanup, I felt that it never did it. Finally last week I ran out of space and decided id reformat this drive, but it was my understanding that unless you wipe a drive clean completely, there are still files on there. I pulled out my maxtor cd and wrote zeros to the entire hard drive. After that I put in my good ol' reformat disk and now its the same way as my other two drives. Now, im wondering if I ever had a bad hard drive in the first place, and ive done some searching on the net trying to figure out how to format the disk so that I can use my format disk lol. Ive found some stuff on running fdisk, and ive ran across a free cd you can download and burn called ultimate boot cd. Can someone point me in the right direction of some way a novice can easily reformat my hard drives for use once again? Whether it be a software prorgram I can download or buy for cheap, or instructions I can print that will actually work with my 566 ir emachine bios to run windows 98se??? Please help me, thanks

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by caperjack

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A compact troubleshooting and reformat checklist to follow after the suggestions from and — focused on separating hardware faults from partition/format problems so Windows 98SE can be installed cleanly.

First, isolate hardware. Confirm the BIOS Setup shows the drive on the Primary/Secondary channel and note the reported capacity. If the drive spins but is not listed, swap the IDE ribbon and Molex power lead and test the suspect drive as the only device on the primary cable with its jumper set to Master/single. If available, test the drive in a different known-good PC or with a USB–IDE adapter to rule out the original motherboard or power supply. Repeated write failures or a format that alternates progress and stops strongly suggest physical media problems (bad sectors or failing electronics).

If the BIOS detects the disk, recreate partitions and perform a full surface-aware format from a clean DOS/Win98 startup environment (this follows ’s fdisk approach but gives the explicit sequence used under DOS/98):

A:\> fdisk
  (delete existing partitions, create a PRIMARY DOS partition, mark it active)
Reboot the machine
A:\> format C:
  (do not use /q for a quick format — allow the full format to complete for a surface test)

After a successful full format, proceed with the Windows 98SE CD install or transfer system files with format C: /s if bootstrapping from a floppy/CD startup disk.

Final notes: vendor diagnostic tools (manufacturer DOS utilities) will give definitive PASS/FAIL results and are the recommended next step for the slow/stalling Quantum or the invisible IBM — multiple failed runs of zero-fill are not a cure for mechanical failure. If diagnostics consistently fail, plan on replacing the drive; if data recovery is critical, consult a specialist before further destructive writes. ’s pointer to Microsoft documentation may help with OS-specific setup quirks already discussed earlier in the thread.

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Member Avatar for pcpalct

Don't know...but it sounds to me like your bootdisk was a bad one.

I recommend just using the Windows ME bootdisk files located at bootdisk.com (or just make one off a Win ME system]. As crappy as Windows ME was, the bootdisk is amazing.

When you make the disk, start up the comp with it...and:

1) at the a: prompt type fdisk and delete all partitions. make a new partition (s)

2) if you're using an XP operating system just restart the PC with the XP CD in the drive (provided you boot from CD)

if not, then you may want to fromat the drive (format C:) after a restart and install your preferred OS.

Member Avatar for Thong_Ispector

Quick question...

Can you get your system to boot to the 98se CD..?

Do you have another computer to use...
(I know your using one now...)

Does it have 98se?
If not what OS is on it...

We can walk you through Fdisk without much trouble...

Please include the size, make and model number of the drives...

....

See you tomorrow...

Member Avatar for terry@fcr

pcpalct, I did what you said and im working again. I wanted to thank you all for the help and assistance. Out of the three, only one was able to work again. My ibm 80 gig doesnt even show up as being there at all, I figure it must be fried even though I can hear it running. My quantum 20 gig works amazingly slow, I think it was gonna take a whole day to format, it goes on for a bit then stops, back and forth, not sure what its deal is. I think ill try writing zeros to it a couple more times incase theres something in there still thats screwing it up? But for now, its the 1 gig drive again lol!!! Atleast this time I was able to convert it to fat 32 which helped on space some, or atleast it looks like it did. Let me know if you guys have any idea whats going on with the quantum 20 gig fireball (I think its a 20) LB 10.0AT 165131-001 or maybe ALB3 0930 and why its acting like that? Thanks again

Member Avatar for caperjack

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