Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of rahaman
rahaman

asked on

how to format hardisk?

I am having a Samsung hartddisk with 2GB. I have tried to format it . While doing so , I am getting a error message that "stack overflow so that this session is halted.please make changes in config.sys file. please help me sollve the problem
Avatar of Pete Long
Pete Long
Flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland image

Flatten your Hard Drive

First thing to do is get hold of a bootable floppy, if you don’t have one download one from.
www.boodisk.com

You can then boot using your boot floppy.

NOTE this will only work if the boot order is set (in the BIOS settings) to boot from the floppy (A:\) drive before the hard drive (may be listed as IDE0)

After the PC has booted and you are at command line type

Fdisk {enter}

The fdisk program will start; if it asks do you want large drive support select the default answer of “y” for yes.

Type 3 {enter} to delete existing DOS partition.

Type 1 to delete the PRIMARY DOS PARTITION.


Type 1 to select PRIMARY DOS PARTITION. (If it wont let you because you have more than one partition you will need to first delete any logical drives then delete the extended partition)
When prompted for VOLUME LABEL, look at the partition information at the top of the screen. Type in exactly what is written under Volume Label for the first partition. If there is nothing there, press the Enter key.
Type Y to verify deletion of the partition.
The primary DOS partition has been deleted. Press the Esc key and the system should return to the utility menu.
Press escape to exit, you MUST now reboot (leave the floppy in!!)
***Now create the new partition***
Type FDISK the at the command prompt and press ENTER:
Click #1. Create DOS Partition or Logical DOS drive' and press ENTER.
Click #1. Create Primary DOS Partition' and press ENTER.
Follow the instructions to create a primary partition of the desired size.
Set your Active Partition. Select 2 from the FDISK Main menu, and set your active
Now that's done, press escape to exit FDISK and reboot your system
***Format the partition***
If you want FAT32 formatting simply reboot and at command line type
format c:
If you want NTFS (For W2K or XP) boot from the setup CD and select “format the partition as NTFS” when prompted
***Help it didn’t work!!***
Download killdisk.exe from http://www.killdisk.com/ and put it on your boot floppy, reboot and type killdisk {enter} at command line.
Avatar of sime1981
sime1981

you can also try

format X: /U   which stands for ultimate, it will format the drive no matter what kind of error occur unless the system hangs....
In config.sys there is a STACKS setting...  Messing with it can improve performance in DOS without SmartDrive..  Anyway, I suggest you hold down CTRL at boot time and select Step By Step Configuration, then enter "no" when asked to process COnfig.sys and Autoexec.bat.  Depending on how much RAM you have the STACKS setting in config.sys might be too high that's all I can think of...
you are going to need to make a boot disk first, then copy on to the boot disk a format.com on to the diskette.  Boot up with the diskette and type format c:

for more information type format /?

Thought the U in Format stood for unconditional?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of modulo
modulo

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Speaking of FDISK, I don't think you need large drive support with your 2GB drive. It makes things faster and easier, but it may just be over the border of large drive support..