FDisk trouble

[bob63]

Need Help

I was messing around with partitions on the HD on my Thinkpad 600X and made a mess of things. So I decided I'd just FDisk every thing and start over. When I tried to delete the logical drives, Fdisk reports there are no logical drives. However when I try to delete the Extended drive Fdisk complains that it can not delete an extended partion while logical drives exist. When I select Display drive info I get the following:

Part Status Type MBytes System Usage
1 ExtDos 1875 33%
C:2 A PriDos 406 FAT32 7%

If I try to create a new logical parition in the extened partition, Fdisk complain that "No logical drives are defined", but then states "All available space in the extended partition is assigned to logical drives". Help!!!, I want to get rid of this extended patition

[Johan]

I had this same issue awhile back. If I remember correctly, I used the Ranish partition mgr. [ http://www.ranish.com/part/ ] to delete the partitions and then used Fdisk to repartition the HDD (I'm used to using Fdisk and am too lazy to learn the commands for partitioning in the Ranish proggie). I hope that I remembered correctly and this works for you.

[rogerdugans]

Last time I found myself in this position I started a Linux install ,which wiped out the partitions completely, and then used fdisk once again.

Sounds like ranish would be more convenient, but today is the first time I heard of it!

[bob63]

My IBM Recovery CD-Rom saved the day. Of cource now I have W98 on a system that used to have Win2k and Linux. At least now I can do a fresh install. Thanks for you help.

[Wa11y]

Originally posted by bob63
My IBM Recovery CD-Rom saved the day. Of cource now I have W98 on a system that used to have Win2k and Linux. At least now I can do a fresh install. Thanks for you help.

Keep in mind that FDisk won't see Linux partitions, and unless you tell it to treat NTFS partitions as large partitions, it won't see them either.

[NeoMoses]

I am very impressed with Linux-Mandrake's partitioning tool. I wish they would package it seperate from the OS, because in my opinion it is the best I've used.

[David]

I use Pocket Linux and CFDISK - easy and quick to use.

[Yodums]

If you have a win2k disc or can borrow it download the bootdisks of theirs and their utility is very easy to use just delete all the drives and reboot and re-fdisk from Win98 and create the FAT32 partitions.

Since if you create FAT32 in Win2K and try to install Win98 it won't allow you since it is NT Kernal version of FAT32.

Yodums

[J37X]

I had this problem a while back when i tried to fdisk my drive, there are actually two ways to go about fixing it. One you can use fdisk at the command line to force a new partition, by doing this it will correct whatever was wrong before, and when you go back and run fdisk, you will be able to delete all partitons, here are the commands that work

FDISK 1/PRI:100 - create a 100meg partition
FDISK 1/EXT:500 - create a 500meg partition in the extended part
FDISK 1/LOG:250 - create a 250meg part in the logical drive in the ext part.

Or you can use the debug function

"DOS-based solution

Boot with a DOS floppy that has "debug" on it; run "debug". At the '-' prompt, "block-fill" a 512-byte chunk of memory with zeroes:

f 9000:0 200 0

Start assembly mode with the 'a' command, and enter the following code:

mov dx,9000
mov es,dx
xor bx,bx
mov cx,0001
mov dx,0080
mov ax,0301
int 13
int 20

Press <Enter> to exit assembly mode, take a deep breath - and press "g" to execute, then "q" to quit "debug". Your HD is now in a virgin state, and ready for partitioning and installation. "

this info about debug, i pasted from this page
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue63/okopnik.html

[David]

WoW!

You can format a HDD in assembly!?
I might try that...

[J37X]

i dont think it is for format, it just clears the MBR, and then you can partition and format like usual

[David]

I may try that tho.

You can program assembly - wow!

where do you learn it?