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11-08-2003, 08:27 PM
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#1 (permalink)
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help quick, bootdisk issues
I'm at my brothers house, and I've been trying to get this older dell working for the past few hours. It has a 1.5GB hd in it that works fine. Its detected by the bios, and I got an NTFS program that read the directories and files so I know the drive itself is fine, and the computer sees it. The problem is it has WinXP PRO on it (not my fault, got this used from a school). Any way bootdisks won't detect the c: drive at all with the expeption of the NTFS reading program. I'm guessing this has something to do with the NTFS, filesystem of the drive. How can I get a bootdisk to see it so I can reformat the drive and install 98 on it? I have to install 3.11 win first then 98 upgrade.
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11-08-2003, 08:36 PM
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#2 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Kansas City, Mo.
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why not leave xp on it
you can use fdisk to remove the non dos partition and then creat a new fat32 partition and set it to active
set the boot to cdrom in the bios
boot with the p8se cd and when it ask for the previous ver just use the 3.1 floppy and it should go from there. it just want to see that you have valid system to upgrade from, you do not have to have it installed.
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11-08-2003, 08:39 PM
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#3 (permalink)
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fdisk didn't detect the HD. I found that strange, but your idea for hte upgrade is a good idea. I hadn't thought of htat for some reason (sorry for the misspellings stupdid keyboard I can't type fast on).
Thanks, I'll try that, if anyone has any ideas though while I'm trying it please tell 
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11-08-2003, 09:06 PM
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#4 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Bay Area, CA USA
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Do what bailey suggest. DO NOT INSTALL 3.11!
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11-08-2003, 09:06 PM
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#5 (permalink)
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didn't work. windows 98 didn't detect the HD. every NTFS based util and the bios detect and run hte drive fine.
My bootdisks read A: and set the cd-rom as R: for some reason. I really don't get any of this. Fdisk, and format will only see the floppy disk as a drive. No HD. Oui... Any help would be good (BTW I've tried two bootdisks from bootdisk.com, the default XP bootdisk that you can make by formating A: and seleting make dos boot disk, and a macafee virus bootdisk).
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11-08-2003, 09:16 PM
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#6 (permalink)
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Could you just 'write zeros to the drive".
Lol, I have never done that but have heard of it......is that something he could do.
Wish I could be of more Bob...I still owe you for telling me how to extract files with "sfc"...lol..about a year and a half ago at least!
JP
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11-08-2003, 09:17 PM
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#7 (permalink)
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11-08-2003, 09:18 PM
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#8 (permalink)
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| Quote: Originally posted by John Prophet
Wish I could be of more Bob... | Don't we all?  | |
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11-08-2003, 09:21 PM
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#9 (permalink)
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hehe.....
a longwinded way might be to take an xp disk and reinstall xp but on fat32....then you have a fat32 partition.
Unless there is some way to start an install with xp and have it delete the partition and somehow stop the install after the partition is deleted etc.
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Last edited by John Prophet; 11-08-2003 at 09:23 PM.
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11-08-2003, 10:28 PM
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#10 (permalink)
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Out, that program erased the partition fine, but fdisk is getting write protected errors. I'm not sure, I'm about to try another HD though incase this one is just bad.
John, tried that XP want 64mbs of mem available and I can't get it to start out of dos so I can skip the tests. Its partition program would be perfect for this. Thanks everyone.
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