Assistance & advice please

[OX-27]

I have just bought a replacement Hard Drive for my laptop.
There is no OS installed, so I am trying to load the Win ME Quick Recovery software onto the disk.

The start-up floppy, when installed detects that there is no FAT, FAT 32 partition.

FDISK is run & support for HDD larger than 512Mb is enabled. Option “1” is selected – “Create DOS partition or logical drive” & then “Create DOS partition”

During verification of drive integrity, it reaches 45% complete, waits a few seconds and then returns to 0% - then verifies back to 45% or thereabouts; this cycle continues until the machine is switched off.:confused:

I am at a loss as to what may be wrong, can any of you pprune gurus suggest the next course of action please. (apart from chucking the HDD in the bin) Many thanks.

[ORAC]

I'd make a guess and say you're upgrading to a larger drive. If it's to a 12Gb+ drive, it may be because the BIOS doesn't support Int13 extensions/LBA, in which case try using "FDISK /X" and creating two or more partitions of less than 8Gb each.

If it's for a 40Gb+ drive, then answering YES to large disk support enables FAT-32 for drives above 32Gb, but, as above, both the OS and the BIOS have to support it. In which case say NO and make 2 or more partitions of about 20Gb.

Lastly, in case it's just a problem with the verification check, try using, "FDISK /ACTOK", which makes FDISK skip the disk integrity check altogether. If it works, use scandisk to check the disk after you format it.

[fobotcso]

Please give us a bit more detail about make of laptop, original and replacement HDDs, OS RAM, etc

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

OX-27,

There is the possibility that the motherboard is bad and it was manifesting itself as a bad Hard Drive, when it could be the Hard Drive Controller that is the actual problem.

As fobotcso mentioned, we really need more details on the notebook itself along with the replacement drive you are using.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. Depending on the age and specs of the notebook, it might be worth skipping WinME and installing WinXP.

[OX-27]

Thanks for the advice so far, the laptop is an Advent 5480DVD, 800MHz CPU with 256Mb RAM. The replacement HDD is a Hitachi DK23BA-10 (identical to the one which was removed).

When purchased, the new HDD had been formatted by the previous owner & therefore, didn’t have an OS installed. As mentioned in my previous post, when trying to partition the drive using FDISK the system hangs at 45% & then starts again from 0% (the suggestion by ORAC of using the FDISK/ACTOK switch had no effect – the system still tries to verify the drive).

I have another HDD of the same type with XP Pro installed, this works perfectly in the computer.

The real problem is that I can’t partition the replacement drive, which would allow me to install any OS. Does this make sense?

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

OX-27,

If you have an XP CD, try partitioning and formatting (NTFS Quick Format Option) with it. That Notebook will have no trouble running WinXP should you want to keep the OS on there.

Take Care,

Richard

[fobotcso]

The partition table on the new HDD is unreadable - probably because the Disk's previous owner formatted it with a third-party Program such as Partition Magic.

I get involved in this kind of thing from time to time. To solve these kinds of problems (they are not uncommon), I either use an external enclosure for the problem disk and get Partition Magic on to the job or I use this set-up with the "new" disk suitably jumpered as Slave.

http://www.fobotcso.co.uk/ExtDisk02.gif

[ORAC]

It might still be a BIOS problem, with the original drive running Hitachi disk manager to circumvent it, or it may be a low-level disk format problem.

Go here (http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm), download and run the Drive Fitness Test and the Ontrack Data Advisor. They should confirm if there is a problem with the drive and, if so, hopefully repair it.

If the drive is OK, download and run the Disk Manager.

[Saab Dastard]

OX-27,

I assume from your posts that you are installing Win ME from a non-bootable CD, using a boot floppy.

when trying to partition the drive using FDISK the system hangs at 45%

The problem as you describe it is not with creating the partition, but either with formatting it or subsequently verifying it - I believe that this is the latter, and probably a Scandisk problem.

I had similar problems installing Windows 98.

Can you edit the autoexec file (copy it first) on the floppy so that you can just boot with CD support, but not run the setup routines? Then you can run fdisk from the command line, then, assuming this works you can format the disk with FAT 32.

On the CD there should be a readme text file with useful info, including the location of further help files on the CD. You should find Setup.txt and read the troubleshooting section. Obviously you can do this on any PC, or with the XP disk installed.

For Win 98 the following was eerily familiar:

"if you have problems while Setup is running ScanDisk, you can bypass ScanDisk in Setup by running Setup with the /IS
option. To do this, type the following command:

setup /is

NOTE: Bypassing ScanDisk during Setup is not recommended.
If you do, there may be problems with your hard disk
that could cause Windows not to install or run correctly. "

This allowed me to get past a similar problem installing Win 98

HTH

SD

[Mac the Knife]

Well, just to add my tuppence-worth...

Consider using Mikhail Ranish's Ranish Partition Manager (the 2.4 is stable). Free, only 60k and sorts out most problems. Very smart, simulation mode and all.

http://www.ranish.com/part/