Hd Formatting Trouble

[Kon-Tiki]

I've got this 80Gb HD hooked up as secondary master, and it gets recognized by BIOS. When I want to access it through Win98SE, it tells me it's unformatted, though, and asks me to format it. When I want to start formatting (Complete, as it won't accept Quick and'll perform Complete then anyways), it tells me there's not enough memory free to do so and that I should quit a few programs. It even says this when I'm running nothing but Windows itself. I tried going to Dos to format it, but it doesn't recognize drive D, it seems, so I can't format it on there too. Anybody here knows what I can do to start using that HD?

[Razor2]

Try F-disk from dos.

Or if it is a WD disk there is a utility called data safeguard, which does the same thing from windows.

[Kon-Tiki]

It's solved now. As it recognized the HD through Windows, but not through pure Dos, but the formatting utility from Windows was acting up, I tried going into a Dos shell under Windows. 't Is formatting now :ok:

Edit: Result from formatting:
The formatting is complete.
Cannot write BOOT
The formatting has ended.

Guess I'm not at the end of it yet :not_ok:

[Omuletzu]

Never tried it, but i saw a feature in the BIOS setup called low level formatting.

[xoopx]

maybe its too big for windows98 to deal with?

[The Fifth Horseman]

In SE? Honestly, I doubt that.

[Data]

what is your partition size ?
fat32 can only support up to 30 gb or so...
so you need to make 3 patitions at least.


The funny thing is that format doesn't warn you about it. and only concludes that it failed.....

[Kon-Tiki]

The HD I've been using so far's been 80Gb as well and worked fine without formatting it, so wouldn't know 'bout the partitions.

[Rogue]

I believe that SE partitions can go up to 120GB (saw that somewhere), but limitation does not have to be on Windows, but in BIOS.

I got an old Gigabit motherboard which supports only hard disks smaller then 40GB. After updeting the bios, it supports hard disks up to 60GB, which did not help me with new 120GB HD I planed to add to that computer. :blink:

Kon-Tiki,
if that's your main hard disk on that computer, start win98 installation from the CD, and at the blue screen, where you have to select computer settings, hit F3 two times to exit installation. Try to format MRB, type fdisk /mbr. Then use fdisk to create partitions. Restart computer after that, do the same with installation and exit with F3 key, then format all partitions you have made. (make sure you format C with /s parametar.

I usually copy Win98 folder (using just a copy command, not xcopy - you need only files from Win98 folders from the CD, subfolders are not needed) to one of non-system paritions, and then run setup.exe from that directory.

[Kon-Tiki]

The HD was just broken. Took it to the shop after testing it under Win98SE, Dos, WinXP, Knoppix, the bootable cd of Win98SE and some tools. Now I got one that formatted fine. I installed Win98SE on it, and what do I get? GODDAMN BLOODY FRIGGIN' THE SAME! It's to hit your head against the wall of :wall: How the *dirty word* hell am I supposed to get my comp up and running again?

[xoopx]

Originally posted by Kon-Tiki@Mar 24 2005, 05:53 PM
The HD was just broken. Took it to the shop after testing it under Win98SE, Dos, WinXP, Knoppix, the bootable cd of Win98SE and some tools. Now I got one that formatted fine. I installed Win98SE on it, and what do I get? GODDAMN BLOODY FRIGGIN' THE SAME! It's to hit your head against the wall of :wall: How the *dirty word* hell am I supposed to get my comp up and running again?
i hate flakey problems like this. its probably some incompatibility with that drives configuration with the bios.
like anubis said, a lot of old bioses just werent made to support such a large capacity drive

[Kon-Tiki]

My old HD is 80Gb and worked fine till last friday. Besides, the BIOS's not that old. Bought that mobo last July.

[Rogue]

What's the message now?

Try to Reset the bios. (reload it)

I'm having simillar problem with one of my computer. (ASUS mobo, XP2100 processor)

Right now when I boot first time, I got voice-message that CPU failed, and there is no HD to boot up. After I reboot the computer, everything worked fine. I tried old BIOS version last night, but still got the same results.

[Kon-Tiki]

It sometimes is that it can't read registery files, sometimes that there's a VDK error. The new one kept saying "Himem.sys is damaged or isn't available", even when I put it in config.sys.

[Rogue]

Get your self Everest - Home Edition (http://www.lavalys.com/index.php?page=product&view=1) and check your computer with it. Check if Everest recognize all devices and settings. Also it might be able to point on the problems.

[Kon-Tiki]

I hooked the HD up to dad's comp, and it booted fine from that one. Then hooked it up to mine again, and it gave the same error again... I guess this means it's a different problem than the HD, but how can I determine where the problem lies (without being able to access that comp)?

[Rogue]

You should get the card with ATA controller next, so that you can check if your HD controller is fine.

Check BIOS settings and make sure your HD is set correctly (pins)

Also, did you try to flash the bios again?

[Kon-Tiki]

Uhmm... mooning something or somebody, only if they really pissed me off, but flashing... I'd rather not.

Anyways, I think (and hope) it's fixed. After an awesome suggestion of checking part by part (exact suggestion was replacing the Ram and seeing if that'd work), it worked with a different IDE cable. Let's hope it stays like this now and keeps on working :) Thanks for the help, everybody :kosta:

[Danny252]

have fun with 80 gig of space ^^ thats alotta porn :P

[Kon-Tiki]

Coding, games, movies and tools. Porn's a waste of diskspace (although you don't see that until you're of legal age)

[xoopx]

Originally posted by Kon-Tiki@Mar 24 2005, 06:52 PM
It sometimes is that it can't read registery files, sometimes that there's a VDK error. The new one kept saying "Himem.sys is damaged or isn't available", even when I put it in config.sys.
this reminds me of a flakey problem i had years ago. it turned out to be bad ram.

another possibility is a tiny bit of corruption in the CMOS settings. this is a weird problem that causes the weirdest hard to figure out errors.

if its that, clearing the CMOS fixes it, if it isnt the ram or some other problem

edit: oh i see it was the ram probably after all.