[RESOLVED] fdisk/hard drive

[qball0193]

My hard drive was reformatted by fdisk and I cannot access it. When I boot from the Win95 boot disk, I get a A: prompt, asking me if I want to format drive C: because it is invalid, I hit yes and then it tells me "Physical Drive C is NOT detected! Invalid hard drive or read error" What do I need to do to access the hard drive in order to format/partition and load Win 95. I can be reached at: qball0193@aol.com

Thanks!!

[clauded]

hi,is it a new drive or did you have something on it before?if you had a drive overlay program,sometime you need the drive overlay progam to take off the drive overlay,like disk manager or watever was used on it,some brand have a small program to set the drive like it was new,hope this is of help,clauded

[Landy]

qball0193 go back into fdisk and make sure the drive is set to active (active partition)

[stevet]

If you have a drive overlay installed, there is a specific procedure you need to follow if you want to boot to a floppy and be able to access the hard drive. If you just leave your boot disk in the drive and let the system boot from it you won't be able to properly see your hard drive because the overlay has not loaded. If you want to boot from a floppy, you need to wait until you see a message like "Press space to boot from a floppy" or something like that. This allows the overlay to load before booting to a boot disk.

Steve

[redcow]

Answer Landy's question first. Do you have an 'active' partition.
FDISK doesn't format a drive. Look at the partition info in FDISK #4.

[houseisland]

If you're still having problems, try formatting a system floppy and copy fdisk onto it. Then boot from the floppy and run fdisk on the drive in question. If it is an LBA bios overlay causing the problem, this technique should get rid of once and for all.

[Ronnie Ratt]

Hi Qball, no one seems to have told you how to format your HD so I will. After you use Fdisk to PARTITION [not format] you then after rebooting have use Format.com, this make your Drive nice and clean to install Windows, At the A prompt from the your boot disc type this format /s c: and follow the instructions till it asks the Volume name, just press enter if you don't want to give it a name and after it goes back to the prompt you can format D: without the /s, then you can copy MSCDEX.exe from your disk to C: [if it's not on your boot disc get it from someone quick because you can't install your CD-Rom without it] then install your CD-Rom drivers and reboot and change to E: or whatever your CD-Rom is and type SETUP [make sure the Win95 disc is in first] and just follow the instructions, you will need your OEM number for this or Windows gets stroppy and won't let you install it.