Hi

I have been trying to format the hard drive of an old HP for a day now, and I'm buggered if I can.

Someone had installed a hooky copy of XP on it, which kept screwing up, so I am trying to format hard drive to get rid of it, then re-install windows 98 (and then an XP Upgrade I ahve).

The version of windows 98 i have is only for computers with no version of windows on it.

I have managed to delete the primary partition using fdisk, i tried format.com tool then and couldn't for various reasons, so I then created a primary partition (using max space on C) and re-started etc. When I tried formatting I got the following message:

"invalid media type reading drive c".

Wha the fa...?

Each time I overcome one obstacle, I get another! Can anybody help?

Steve

Boot with a 98SE bootdisk. (Choose No cdrom support.) When you get the A:\> prompt type run fdisk and choose option 4. Post back exactly what it reports.

OR, go for broke and use the above bootdisk to delete (using fdisk) all partitions and try again. If there is a partition that won't delete with fdisk, download delpart and put it (delpart.exe) on a floppy. This is a Microsoft product which will easily delete non-dos partitions. When you're ready to use it, just switch floppies and type in;

delpart

and hit Enter. Be careful of which hard disk you are on if more than one. Use this to delete any partitions then exit. Switch back to the 98SE bootdisk and use fdisk to create/make active a new FAT/DOS partition. Reboot and format the new partition.

If you require the updated fdisk (for hard disks larger than 64GB) you can download it here.

Hi Dan,

thanks for the advice - I ran fdisk (option 4) and got:

Partition: Status Type Volume Label Mbytes System Usage
C: 1 A PRI DOS 14323 UNKNOWN 100%

Is this any help?

Steve

What size is the hard disk? 14.3GB is being reported, is this the correct hard disk size? (Just to establish that the hard disk is recognized properly in the bios.)

If all the information proves to be correct but the disk won't react, download the disk manufacturers diagnostic utilities and run them on the drive. There should also be a disk blanking utility (zero-fill) included. Check the disk then run the manufacturers format or zero fill utility.

You'll probably have to open the case to see the hard disk make. This is best done on a non-carpeted floor surface. If you have to dismount the hard disk, touch the main chassis before touching any interior components, and avoid touching the underside of the hard disk. Try to handle it by the edges only.

If you can't locate the manufacturers diagnostics, post back with the make/model number of the hard disk.

Many thanks for the help - I will try it all and post back tomorrow (have meeting )

Thanks again - much appreciated.

Steve

I've also experienced problems trying to get rid of an XP NTFS partition so that I could then install an older operating system on a FAT32 partition. I can't remember exactly what my partitioning / formatting issue was but I recall that I resolved it eventually by booting the system from a Windows XP CDROM, then getting a couple of minutes into the XP install process where it asks you what partition to install on. I used the option in the XP install to delete the partition, then I simply exited the install. I was left with a hard disk that had no partitions at all and I was then able to reboot onto a 98 boot disk and create a primary partition and format it correctly.

Incidentally, 14323Mb is an uncommon size for a hard disk so, as Dan rightly says, you should satisfy yourself that it is being reported correctly. I'm presuming that it's actually a 15Gb disk, which weren't made in particularly large quantities.

Also, in case you don't already know, FDISK is confirming to you that you've got 100% of the available disk space allocated to Partition 1, which has defaulted as the C: drive and is set "Active" and is a Primary DOS partition, which means you can boot from it and install any version of Windows once it is formatted. It is saying that the "System" is unknown because you haven't formatted it yet. Once it's formatted, returning to FDISK would give you the same report, except that the file system would be shown as FAT32.

FAT32 will be automatically used as the file system instead of FAT (a.k.a. FAT16) because you chose to enable large disk support when FDISK asked you. Large disk support means being able to handle partitions greater than 2.1Gb.