[ibelimb]

Hi,

I reformatted my hard drive, did fdisk, made the whoel disk primary portition, formatted C:, and installed drivers for CD-Rom. I did this all in 1 proccess, no restarting the pc during any process (except fdisk, had to reboot). After i installed the CD-Rom drivers, i rebooted, and the C: drive isnt readable anymore, i could access it before boot but after i couldnt, so in otherwords, i cant install my OS because i need to reboot for CD-Rom drivers to work, and if i do, C: goes back to unreadable format. What can i do to fix this?

Thanks,
Limb

 

[Guest]

Welcome to Tech Support Forums ibelimb

First things first! What OS are you using?

And what brand of hard drive do you have?....:winking:

 

[ibelimb]

im not runnign one, i reformatted. Maxtor HD.

 

[Guest]

OK let me put it this way!!!

What OS are you planning on using on this Maxtor Hard Drive..

 

[ibelimb]

Windows Me then upgrading to XP, or if i borrow XP full form my friend, would it work then?

 

[ibelimb]

Forgot, im gonna add linux onto it too

 

[TheTechIsIn]

use a bootdisk and boot to A:, then run Fdisk again, select option 4 ( Partition Information) and let me know everything that it says.

 

[ibelimb]

Display Partition Information

Partion Status Type Volume Label Mbytes System Usage
C: 1 A PRI DOS 12415 UKNOWN 100%

Total Diskspace is 12415 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes)

 

[JAMMAN]

Personally I would set the bios to boot to cd, put winme disk in and let it rip. To load your alternate "OS'es", I would suggest buying a program like partition magic. It will run in ME and you will be able to create your Linux partition (and swap partition) AND a partition for XP. I don't have XP but if it is anything like 2000, put it in last. 2000 will configure a "boot commander" of sorts which will give you the option of which OS to load at the boot. How about XP guys- is it as easy with XP?

 

[ibelimb]

No, the problem is, i cnat get my CD-Rom to work, and im trying to get C: to stay afetr i reboot so i can install drivers to run CD.

 

[JAMMAN]

You don't need cdrom drivers to boot from CD. Set the bios to boot from cd and let it rip. Trust me, dude.

 

[JAMMAN]

Maybe I should ask what mobo you have. Some of the old old old ones didn't have the boot from CD option (I think somewhere around P200.............)

 

[ibelimb]

Which way, i jkust set it to CDROM,C, A and it didnt work and whats a mobo?

 

[JAMMAN]

OK. MOBO is a geek slang for "motherboard" which is not an issue now since you have the settings right.

Now we are on the trail.

In your first bios window set the hdd detection to auto. (no user defined stuff) ALL 4 OF THEM (primary master and slave, secondary master and slave) Then try it. Make sure to read the screen during boot, it will problaby say something like "press any key to boot from CD" for a few seconds then try to access your C drive. So press any key when it asks. Make sure the cd is in the drive before booting. If this STILL doesn't work, you have a bum CD player, a bad cable or a spent channel on your MOBO. Good luck man.

 

[Guest]

One thing to try is go here and download a boot disk by going to boot disks in the upper left hand part of the screen!

Then page down to the Win ME boot disk....:winkgrin:

After you make the new disk try booting from it and use start with CD-Rom support when asked...:winking:

BTW what did you use for a boot disk?

 

[ibelimb]

Made on on this pc (win ME) and a old 98 floppy.

Guess im gonna have to go buy a cheap cD-Rom driver

 

[Midnight Tech]

Before buying another CD drive, try using that one in another machine to rule out the possibility that its dead. If it is, try to find a friend who might sell you their old one.

 

[TheTechIsIn]

Before you go and buy anything... lets rule out this: Is the CD bootable, Windows ME Upgrade and Windows 98SE is not bootable off the CD. FYI

The Fdisk report you gave indicates that your drive is no longer formated correctly ie it does not contain a standard Fat16 or Fat32. You will need to reformat the drive.

 

[Guest]

It looks like it was fdisked but not formatted.....:bandit:

 

[ibelimb]

Nono i was havign trouble when i posted that, im formatting it now correctly and set it to Normal in the bios (not Large, or lba) to see fi the data will stay on Normal.