Formatting my system disk

Belefuu · 08-01-2005, 05:52 PM

Ok, I finaly decided my system disk needs a reformat. I restart in command prompt mode, type format c:, and it says files are in use, won't let me reformat. I use the Windows XP setup disc, which has a formatting utility on it, and it says it can't find any disks. So I make a boot CD (removed my floppy for random reason a while ago), reboot, it loads up, type format c:... and it says there is no such disk.

A few weird things that might be related... In BIOS is basically says I have no primary master and slave disks. Auto-detect does nothing, manual won't even let me set it up. Also, in the properties for my disks is has them both as SCSI disk drives... which is wrong, the system drive is IDE, and the storage drive SATA. This is pretty recent, I remember them being labelled correctly a few months ago or whatever the last time I happened to look at disk properties.

Any ideas?

Kallian · 08-01-2005, 06:08 PM

Wow, that's messed up.

try:

fdisk /mbr

then format your stuff.

this is asuming you don't dual boot with a linux distro.

edit:

maybe run your m.f.g. hard disks diagnostics, also might try turing off virtual memory then rebooting and giving it a go.

Kallian · 08-01-2005, 06:24 PM

btw, how on earth are you booting when your bios is not reporting any hard drives?

nm, scsi. weird.

Belefuu · 08-01-2005, 06:34 PM

BIOS doesn't show any hds, but somehow the bootup screen shows them both. Actually has them as Primary Master and Secondary Master.

More weirdness... I have no fdisk program... ie, type in fdisk in Run, says it cannot find Fdisk. Did a search, there is no Fdisk. Anyways, I have it on the boot CD. It showed my C drive, but under the Drive column (where the drive letter should be) it has "--" instead of C. So it appears somehow my hd has no name outside of Windows... or something.

Honestly, it's just my luck that when I finaly decide to bite the bullet and format, it won't even fucking work. bleh

Kallian · 08-01-2005, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Belefuu

BIOS doesn't show any hds, but somehow the bootup screen shows them both. Actually has them as Primary Master and Secondary Master.

More weirdness... I have no fdisk program... ie, type in fdisk in Run, says it cannot find Fdisk. Did a search, there is no Fdisk. Anyways, I have it on the boot CD. It showed my C drive, but under the Drive column (where the drive letter should be) it has "--" instead of C. So it appears somehow my hd has no name outside of Windows... or something.

Honestly, it's just my luck that when I finaly decide to bite the bullet and format, it won't even fucking work. bleh

go to bootdisk.com or something and make a win98 boot disk, it will have fdisk on there.

have you tried turning off your VM?

Ashes Emberblade · 08-01-2005, 07:05 PM

If you can, try a different motherboard; your current one sounds like it's damaged.

tanjo · 08-01-2005, 09:56 PM

did you try turning off your computer and physically clearing your bios? sounds like bios is messed up, which would affect dos.

Bralkan · 08-02-2005, 02:32 PM

I'd try re-setting your bios and seeing if it recognizes your disks.

You may also want to unhook the sata drive and just leave your boot drive hooked up.

I've never heard of a SATA and an IDE drive showing up using the primary / secondary of the same channel either. Might just be something I havn't seen though, not that you can't do it.

08-02-2005, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kallian

go to bootdisk.com or something and make a win98 boot disk, it will have fdisk on there.

Reading comprehension 101 ... in his original post ...

"So I make a boot CD (removed my floppy for random reason a while ago),"

Last I checked bootdisk.com didn't have images for making bootable CD's, and even if they did, he said he made a bootable CD himself.

Belefuu · 08-02-2005, 05:06 PM

Oh man this is hella gay. Cleared the BIOS, same thing.

I did some stupid stuff in fdisk which may have wiped or done something weird to the hd in question (all of this since the last post, so this doesn't concern the original problem). I used the fdisk /x command so that it would allow me to create/delete partitions. After using fdisk on another properly functioning computer with another drive, it seems the no label thing is normal, and basically everything was showing up ok in fdisk before. Anyways, before I did anything to the disk in question, it showed one partition of ~38000MB in fdisk (correct hd size), then said it had ~8000MB free space. Well, not really knowing what I was doing, I deleted that partition, and made a new one. Made it fat32, was the only option that seemed to make since. I skipped the "analyze disk area". Anyways, this ended up giving me a ~8000MB partition, the exact size of the free space. Still can't format it, still says invalid drive, etc etc.

I put the drive into another computer, booted up with a boot disk, and it's doing the exact same thing. Thing is, the BIOS on this computer recognizes it fine. However it still says invalid drive when I attempt to format, Windows Setup says there is no drive present, etc.

Ahh yes, when I attempted it with just my storage drive (SATA 160gb) plugged in (to see what it said in fdisk, etc), the damn boot disk wouldn't work. Said something like "NTDLR missing, press CTRL + ALT + DEL". I'm guessing this might have to do with it being an SATA drive hooked up to an SATA to IDE adapter card on the mobo. Or something.

Man do I love computers...

Kallian · 08-02-2005, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bonzai Da Gnome

Reading comprehension 101 ... in his original post ...

"So I make a boot CD (removed my floppy for random reason a while ago),"

Last I checked bootdisk.com didn't have images for making bootable CD's, and even if they did, he said he made a bootable CD himself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kallian The motherfucking master

go to bootdisk.com or something and make a win98 boot disk, it will have fdisk on there.

DURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
DURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
DURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Wow.

How about you start THINKING? He made a bootdisk from that website and got fdisk.exe. He then put it on a CD or whatever and used it. My original intent was not for him to use the win98 boot disk, but to rip fdisk.exe off of it.

Shut the fuck up.

Kallian · 08-02-2005, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Belefuu

Oh man this is hella gay. Cleared the BIOS, same thing.

I did some stupid stuff in fdisk which may have wiped or done something weird to the hd in question (all of this since the last post, so this doesn't concern the original problem). I used the fdisk /x command so that it would allow me to create/delete partitions. After using fdisk on another properly functioning computer with another drive, it seems the no label thing is normal, and basically everything was showing up ok in fdisk before. Anyways, before I did anything to the disk in question, it showed one partition of ~38000MB in fdisk (correct hd size), then said it had ~8000MB free space. Well, not really knowing what I was doing, I deleted that partition, and made a new one. Made it fat32, was the only option that seemed to make since. I skipped the "analyze disk area". Anyways, this ended up giving me a ~8000MB partition, the exact size of the free space. Still can't format it, still says invalid drive, etc etc.

Delete all partitions and create a new primary one.

If that doesn't work, do this:

1) Go to Walmart.
2) Buy baseball bat.
3) You know what to do.
4) newegg.com
5) oh happy day

Belefuu · 08-04-2005, 12:00 AM

Finally got it all sorted out. Initial problem seemed to be that I had my IDE system drive routed through an SATA adapter card. This was causing it to be basically nonexistent in BIOS. I have no idea how it was booting up Windows before, cause it certaintly wouldn't when I tried it that way after reformatting. So I had to hook the IDE up directly to the mobo (had it on a 3 headed IDE cable going from adapter card to board to hd lol), then installed the correct drivers for the adapter card and everything is working fine. Learn something every day I suppose.

08-01-2005, 05:52 PM	#1 (permalink)
Belefuu Poster Heavy Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 1,000 -2 Internets	Formatting my system disk Ok, I finaly decided my system disk needs a reformat. I restart in command prompt mode, type format c:, and it says files are in use, won't let me reformat. I use the Windows XP setup disc, which has a formatting utility on it, and it says it can't find any disks. So I make a boot CD (removed my floppy for random reason a while ago), reboot, it loads up, type format c:... and it says there is no such disk. A few weird things that might be related... In BIOS is basically says I have no primary master and slave disks. Auto-detect does nothing, manual won't even let me set it up. Also, in the properties for my disks is has them both as SCSI disk drives... which is wrong, the system drive is IDE, and the storage drive SATA. This is pretty recent, I remember them being labelled correctly a few months ago or whatever the last time I happened to look at disk properties. Any ideas?

08-01-2005, 06:08 PM	#2 (permalink)
Kallian CHARLIE DON'T SURF! Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 779 +0 Internets	Wow, that's messed up. try: fdisk /mbr then format your stuff. this is asuming you don't dual boot with a linux distro. edit: maybe run your m.f.g. hard disks diagnostics, also might try turing off virtual memory then rebooting and giving it a go. __________________ In Soviet Russia, Exception throws you! Last edited by Kallian : 08-01-2005 at 06:13 PM.

08-01-2005, 06:24 PM	#3 (permalink)
Kallian CHARLIE DON'T SURF! Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 779 +0 Internets	btw, how on earth are you booting when your bios is not reporting any hard drives? nm, scsi. weird. __________________ In Soviet Russia, Exception throws you!

08-02-2005, 05:06 PM	#10 (permalink)
Belefuu Poster Heavy Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 1,000 -2 Internets	Oh man this is hella gay. Cleared the BIOS, same thing. I did some stupid stuff in fdisk which may have wiped or done something weird to the hd in question (all of this since the last post, so this doesn't concern the original problem). I used the fdisk /x command so that it would allow me to create/delete partitions. After using fdisk on another properly functioning computer with another drive, it seems the no label thing is normal, and basically everything was showing up ok in fdisk before. Anyways, before I did anything to the disk in question, it showed one partition of ~38000MB in fdisk (correct hd size), then said it had ~8000MB free space. Well, not really knowing what I was doing, I deleted that partition, and made a new one. Made it fat32, was the only option that seemed to make since. I skipped the "analyze disk area". Anyways, this ended up giving me a ~8000MB partition, the exact size of the free space. Still can't format it, still says invalid drive, etc etc. I put the drive into another computer, booted up with a boot disk, and it's doing the exact same thing. Thing is, the BIOS on this computer recognizes it fine. However it still says invalid drive when I attempt to format, Windows Setup says there is no drive present, etc. Ahh yes, when I attempted it with just my storage drive (SATA 160gb) plugged in (to see what it said in fdisk, etc), the damn boot disk wouldn't work. Said something like "NTDLR missing, press CTRL + ALT + DEL". I'm guessing this might have to do with it being an SATA drive hooked up to an SATA to IDE adapter card on the mobo. Or something. Man do I love computers... Last edited by Belefuu : 08-02-2005 at 05:08 PM.

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08-01-2005, 06:34 PM	#4 (permalink)
Belefuu Poster Heavy Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 1,000 -2 Internets	BIOS doesn't show any hds, but somehow the bootup screen shows them both. Actually has them as Primary Master and Secondary Master. More weirdness... I have no fdisk program... ie, type in fdisk in Run, says it cannot find Fdisk. Did a search, there is no Fdisk. Anyways, I have it on the boot CD. It showed my C drive, but under the Drive column (where the drive letter should be) it has "--" instead of C. So it appears somehow my hd has no name outside of Windows... or something. Honestly, it's just my luck that when I finaly decide to bite the bullet and format, it won't even fucking work. bleh

08-01-2005, 07:05 PM	#6 (permalink)
Ashes Emberblade Better than You Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: NOLA Posts: 1,503 -49 Internets	If you can, try a different motherboard; your current one sounds like it's damaged.

08-01-2005, 09:56 PM	#7 (permalink)
tanjo like a dum whore cripple Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: St. Louis Posts: 620 +1 Internets	did you try turning off your computer and physically clearing your bios? sounds like bios is messed up, which would affect dos.

08-02-2005, 02:32 PM	#8 (permalink)
Bralkan Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Atlanta GA Posts: 2,130 -1 Internets	I'd try re-setting your bios and seeing if it recognizes your disks. You may also want to unhook the sata drive and just leave your boot drive hooked up. I've never heard of a SATA and an IDE drive showing up using the primary / secondary of the same channel either. Might just be something I havn't seen though, not that you can't do it.

08-04-2005, 12:00 AM	#13 (permalink)
Belefuu Poster Heavy Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 1,000 -2 Internets	Finally got it all sorted out. Initial problem seemed to be that I had my IDE system drive routed through an SATA adapter card. This was causing it to be basically nonexistent in BIOS. I have no idea how it was booting up Windows before, cause it certaintly wouldn't when I tried it that way after reformatting. So I had to hook the IDE up directly to the mobo (had it on a 3 headed IDE cable going from adapter card to board to hd lol), then installed the correct drivers for the adapter card and everything is working fine. Learn something every day I suppose.