Wrong HDD Size In Windows 98

[smazzle21]

Ok here goes, I have this computer which had a few viruses. With the computer came a ghost image of it's first day. I formatted the computer. I went to fdisk, deleted the partition, and recreated it. It shows up in fdisk as 38170mb (or 37gb). In the bios, it recognizes the hdd properly. Now in windows, and dos prompt, it thinks the hdd is only 5.26gb. Should I try forgetting the ghost image, or should i delete the partition in fdisk, recreate and THEN format it?? Damn computer is pissing me off. It's only a year old and it recognized the drive fine before but now i don't know wtf is goin on. I appreciate any help. I will be near the computer tonight to respond to anyone who may respond to this. THANKS!!!!!!

[pickel]

Before you do anything, run a virus checker and make sure there aren't any still hanging around. Then depending on the manufacturer, I would write zeros to the drive to verify it's integrity and make sure it's clean. Then fdisk , format and re-install your OS .

which had a few viruses

Any idea which ones? Some are much harder to get rid of than others.

Welcome to TechIMO, BTW.

If it IS a virus problem, then you may need to do a virus scan of the MBR as well as the drive partition, so use a known clean boot floppy or a bootable CD with an antivirus scanner on it. even that is not infallible, as it will depend on how up-to-date virus definitions on the floppy/CD are.

I'd suggest wiping the whole partition with fdisk, re partitioning, and reinstalled the ghosted image.

If it worked before, unless you were using a DDO or something, then it should work again.

Cheers
Mick