Hard drive wont partition.

F

forrehmmnd

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 25, 2007
Messages
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Ok, i have this older system. hasnt been used for a while because i knew the hard drive was dead. I found and older one lying around and i know it works. When i try to install windows on any of the hard drives ive tried, it gets to the partition screen, lets me pick a disk and a partition size but when i press enter it doesnt partition. :confused:. is the motherboard shot or... never has this happen to me.
 
Will FDISK from a booted floppy/cd-rom/USB/etc let you play with partitions on that drive?
 
Partition information is stored int he Master Boot Record (MBR - first sector on the drive). Look to see if there is an option in your BIOS to protect the MBR from alteration. If there is, disable that feature and try again. It may be labeled something like "Virus" protection.
 
Ill try those things, thanks. Its jsut with this motherboard, it boots really quickly and its hard to get into the bios menu :p
 
i tried fdisk, and ultimate boot cd and neither would let me partition the drive :confused:
 
i cant get into the bios, it wont let me. Ive tried the usual buttons and none of them go into the bios.
 
Ok, i reset the CMOS and got into the bios. theres nothing in there that would stop it from partitioning that i can see.
 
yeah, and now it blue screens before i can even get to the partition menu on windows setup
 
I didn't notice this in your original post. Did you try with another hard drive? If you are getting the same symptom with 2 different drives, I would say it is your MOBO. I would also try a different cable. Those ribbon cable connectors can be real flakey sometimes.

Also try downloading the diagnostic program from the hard drive manufacturers web site in their support area. They usually have an option to download a package that will make a bootable floppy.

If you can boot to a c: prompt from a boot floppy, try running fdisk /mbr as that will put a new MBR on the disk. That was an old trick to clear some boot record virus' in the day.

Hope this helps.

Don
 
ive tried multiple harddrives, multiple cables and ive tried just about everything on the Ultimate boot CD> nothing seems to work. Its not that big of a loss if its the mobo, because this is a secondary system.
 
Ok, pretty sure it's a MOBO then. Older models can be had pretty cheap if you want to reuse your ram and CPU. Unless it's really old.

Don
 
I put the hard drive in my main pc, partitioned it, put it back into the secondary pc and then installed windows, but now it posts, but just comes up with boot failure when i try to boot.
 
well, the cpu is a pentium 4 1.6 ghz socket 478, and the ram is pc133 (lol)
Click to expand...

Hah yourself. I am in the process of reinstalling Winblows 2000 on your systems cousin here today. It's an old Compaq D500 desktop that my wife retired a couple of months ago. I am donating it to her Church's school. I just have to finish the updates on it to make it somewhat impervious to internet infestation. My daughter is still using one just like it in her room She is not a big techno geek like me, so it fits her needs just fine for now.

Sounds like the IDE controller on your Mobo is shot. You can disable the onboard IDE and run with a PCI card controller if you have one or can pick one up cheap off of Ebay or Pricewatch.

Don
 
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