systemshock

while reinstalling, i partitioned the disk with fdisk to get rid of the partitions. the problem is that i forgot to set a fixed disk, problem is that i cant correct this as fdisk doesnt allow me to run it up as there are no fixed disks present. is there any way around this?

gracias seniors

oh and before anyone says, look at the post a few down, Format doesnt allow me to access the disk. im not that inept

Doctor Beg

format wont work unless you have a partition to format... fdisk wont work unless it can detect the hard drive... looks like you may need to replace your hard drive based on a cursory glance at your previous posts... however you may want to see if the hard drive is at least being detected in BIOS, if it says none, it either means it is disabled and needs to be changed to auto or its not being detected under auto, where again you may need to replace the failing hard drive... you may also want to check to make sure your hard drive is jumpered to master... cable select will work, however it depends on which position on the cable its in... if you have a SCSI hard drive, make sure you have a unique scsi id, and that the chain is terminated

systemshock

the drive itself is fine, thats the wierd thing, ive used it as an external storage, its a laptop so there is no problem with the SCSI terminators, the wierdest thing is that i had the same problem with another hdd, but it worked when i semi-formatted the drive then ran it up in fdisk, ive also tried it through linux, it formats into an ex2 or ex3 partition, however it doesnt like fat32. The irritating thing is that i have no windows pc to format it on, thats the biggest problem, ive got the mac and the linux, but hey, i can live without windows, its the rest of my family that cant, bit funny really.

peace

Rhinorob

I just finished going through the same problem. Used fdisk to partition drive rebooted - tried to reinstall Windows98 and received the "no fixed disk prompt - no FAT 32 installed" Came up the same trying to reuse fdisk. I tried using Win95 boot disk that wouldn't search for FAT32, went into Net Bios and reset defaults, nothing worked. All my efforts at first were spend on the software side - since I was postive I must have goofed somehow with Fdisk. Finally I started to look at the hardware side. Turned out the connector ribbon (there's a least two - one to your IDE and one two your ROM drive) to the IDE was loose. Rehooked and voila - it was back to normal. In your case, maybe your connector ribbon is damaged rather than just loose - you could also try using the connector ribbon from the ROM drive to your IDE, see if that works, and if it does, then purchase a new connector for your IDE. Hope this works for ya!

Cheers

Rhinorob
Wpg, Canada

idtent

Drive overlay??

What make and model of drive is it? Boot from the hard drive with nothing in the cd or floppy disk. See if a message comes up and says "Press a key to boot from floppy" or something like that... Put boot disk in floppy with fdisk on it. Preferably win98 fdisk.