Rebuild pc
I'm paying the price for not paying attention when I was learning dos/hardware a decade ago. I played around with Partition Magic on my win95 home pc (Pentium 133) and it crashed (get the message "invalid system disk" when I reboot) My pc has two physical hard drives, the first (3 G) was partioned equally to C, E and F. The second (1.3 G), where i backed up all the data files is on D.
I used my rescue Floppy disk to reboot the pc. The C drive is stuffed, there's nothing in the windows directory so I have to reformat C which is ok since I have the data backed up on D.
The floppy disk has config.sys, format.com and fdisk.exe etc, and I have the win95 cd.
Do I have enough to rebuild/reformat C?
I've tried the following but havent got anywhere.
1) reboot pc using floppy in A
2) run fdisk
3) tried to reformat c by first removing logical drives and extended partitions (E and F). I dont think I did that right because even though a message says 3000 MB space available, only 1000 MB shows in lone partition C
4) tried "format c:" and "format c:/s". Didn't work, pc just hangs. On reboot, there's still files and directories etc on C so the format didnt work.
5) A friend suggested the above and also mentioned CMOS. Heard about it but cant remember how to get to it/use it
Can someone provide idiot proof, step by step instructions (that someone off the street can follow!) to rebuild my pc (just dont touch drive D). And, as I have the win95 cd is there a way I can make my CD rom bootable? If so, does that mean I can recover future system crashes easily by just rebooting with this CD.
thanks
I used my rescue Floppy disk to reboot the pc. The C drive is stuffed, there's nothing in the windows directory so I have to reformat C which is ok since I have the data backed up on D.
The floppy disk has config.sys, format.com and fdisk.exe etc, and I have the win95 cd.
Do I have enough to rebuild/reformat C?
I've tried the following but havent got anywhere.
1) reboot pc using floppy in A
2) run fdisk
3) tried to reformat c by first removing logical drives and extended partitions (E and F). I dont think I did that right because even though a message says 3000 MB space available, only 1000 MB shows in lone partition C
4) tried "format c:" and "format c:/s". Didn't work, pc just hangs. On reboot, there's still files and directories etc on C so the format didnt work.
5) A friend suggested the above and also mentioned CMOS. Heard about it but cant remember how to get to it/use it
Can someone provide idiot proof, step by step instructions (that someone off the street can follow!) to rebuild my pc (just dont touch drive D). And, as I have the win95 cd is there a way I can make my CD rom bootable? If so, does that mean I can recover future system crashes easily by just rebooting with this CD.
thanks
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
Have been hit by the flu recently. For some reason config.sys has been removed from my diskette, will have to create another diskette and try your suggestion.
In addition to this make sure you have your CD rom dos drivers available, the MSCDEX.exe file and command.com it will be bootable as long as you make your autoexec.bat and config.sys files on the boot floppy and the MSCDEX.exe and you basic CD-rom driver files with it I am not sure thou it will all fit on 1.44mb floppy.. Depends on the size of the files
Autoexec.bat and config.sys are optional - you don't need them just to run fdisk and format. The program files are needed, of course, but not much more. The disk needs to be bootable, which means the system files of the appropriate O/S. If you do not need support for FAT32, it could well be enough with a DOS 6.22 boot floppy containing only msdos.sys, io.sys and the format and fdisk program files.
Regards
/RID
Regards
/RID
To get rid of partitions use the util delpart.exe
It's available from
http://www.ntfaq.com/ntfaq/download/delpart.exe
It's available from
http://www.ntfaq.com/ntfaq/download/delpart.exe
Please advise what type of pc you have.......compaq.........
ASKER
my pc was bought from a dodgy one man dealer 5 years ago. it's just a plain no name, ibm compatible, pentium 1, 133mhz, 48 ram, win 95 with 2 physical drives.
haven't been able yet to take my pc apart at home yet and try the suggestions, work is going ballistic at the moment and my home desk has 9 mths of paperwork floating around so some serious spring cleaning required.
haven't been able yet to take my pc apart at home yet and try the suggestions, work is going ballistic at the moment and my home desk has 9 mths of paperwork floating around so some serious spring cleaning required.
ASKER
found BIOS setup, using <Ctrl-Alt-Esc> as rid suggested. played around with the settings for the boot sequence, but it only gives me around 4 options none of which is
cdrom, a, c (i'm assuming this is how you make the win95 cd bootable), so i'm left with sequence
a, c
When I try to format c by typing
format c:
or
format c: /s
or
format c:/s
nothing happens, the pc just hangs for over 30 minutes.
is my c drive gone forever?
cdrom, a, c (i'm assuming this is how you make the win95 cd bootable), so i'm left with sequence
a, c
When I try to format c by typing
format c:
or
format c: /s
or
format c:/s
nothing happens, the pc just hangs for over 30 minutes.
is my c drive gone forever?
What does fdisk show when you use that?
no your harddrive is not gone forever its simply not being detected. When you changed the bios settings, was a harddrive listed in the first page of the bios?
If so then the harddrive is there, just need to use a boot floppy, when you get to the A:> you can check the integrity of the drive by typing in c:> and if you get a C:> then you are fine
If not. Use the fdisk as a mentioned above to make sure you have a proper partition, you may have to delete the existing partition(s) then restart, with the boot floppy, start fdisk again and create a new active partition and restart the system again.
Once the system is restarted, type a:> format c: /s /u
Depending on what type of drive that it is, if its a Western Digital for example they have a WDDIAG program that tells you if your harddrive is still good.
If so then the harddrive is there, just need to use a boot floppy, when you get to the A:> you can check the integrity of the drive by typing in c:> and if you get a C:> then you are fine
If not. Use the fdisk as a mentioned above to make sure you have a proper partition, you may have to delete the existing partition(s) then restart, with the boot floppy, start fdisk again and create a new active partition and restart the system again.
Once the system is restarted, type a:> format c: /s /u
Depending on what type of drive that it is, if its a Western Digital for example they have a WDDIAG program that tells you if your harddrive is still good.
Any news here? What happens?
/RID
/RID
ASKER
finally rebuilt my pc, problem was my floppy disk wasn't fully functional, a friend gave me a cd rom bootable win98 boot disk. after i reformatted my c drive i put in my win95 cd and installed win95.
Problem now is that some of the software wont install correctly, and as regclean didnt help I guess I will have to reformat my c drive all over again, but thats another issue (unless someone knows an inexpensive utility that will clean the registry).
you all gave some handy advice so it's hard to pinpoint who to give the pts to but i think rid was the most helpful, besides i may bump into him/her when i backpack scani again one day.
Problem now is that some of the software wont install correctly, and as regclean didnt help I guess I will have to reformat my c drive all over again, but thats another issue (unless someone knows an inexpensive utility that will clean the registry).
you all gave some handy advice so it's hard to pinpoint who to give the pts to but i think rid was the most helpful, besides i may bump into him/her when i backpack scani again one day.
Oh. Well, I'm not dangerous. A beer will keep me calm anytime.....
/RID
/RID
http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2Farchive%2Fg0704%2F13u6%2F13u6%2Easp&guid=0aj4puqo&searchtype=0&WordList=install+new+hard+drive
http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2Farchive%2Fg0802%2F06g02%2F06g02%2Easp&guid=0aj4puqo&searchtype=0&WordList=install+new+hard+drive