Laptop won't reformat...

P

pduan87

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 31, 2001
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Well I have here a Dell Latitude CPi P2 400. The problem is that I reformatted and tried installing gentoo linux. I could never finish the installation so I just said screw it. Now I'm trying to reinstall win2k and when trying to reformat the drive in NTFS(6.5gb?) it always gets stuck at 22%.

What the hell is going on? I hope its not physical damage to the drive because its out of warranty...
 
I've had similar problems with an HP laptop before, and never did get it to work.
 
I've seen it too, just do a quick format, ought to be fine that way.

Otherwise the hard drive is half-toasted.
 
Originally posted by malingjc
I've seen it too, just do a quick format, ought to be fine that way.

Otherwise the hard drive is half-toasted.
Click to expand...

Quick format? You must remember that there is no OS installed.

Also, I hate this moving crap. Every single thread has to be EXACTLY on topic. Practically no one ever reads this forum. God... thats the problem with sooo many damn forums :mad:
 
Originally posted by pduan87
Quick format? You must remember that there is no OS installed.

Also, I hate this moving crap. Every single thread has to be EXACTLY on topic. Practically no one ever reads this forum. God... thats the problem with sooo many damn forums :mad:
Click to expand...

cant you do a quick format when installing 2k (ie booting up from the win2k cd ) ?
You can do this with xp's cd too .... since you want 2k, format with xp, then restart, pop in 2k cd and install ....
 
If you've installed linux, it probably borked your master boot record. Take a win98 boot disk of some sorts and boot to a command prompt. navigate to c: and type "fixmbr" hit enter. Do this about 5 times. This rewrites a new TOC for the HD. After doing this type "format c:". although this will format in fat32, its okay. Load up whatever OS your going to install and it will give you an option to leave it as fat32 or you can do NTFS. Whatever you do, don't do quick formats.
 
Originally posted by pduan87
Quick format? You must remember that there is no OS installed.

Also, I hate this moving crap. Every single thread has to be EXACTLY on topic. Practically no one ever reads this forum. God... thats the problem with sooo many damn forums :mad:
Click to expand...

this is the first forum i check when i go to hardforums.
 
is there a possibility that the cd is bad, maybe even warped or something if not scratched? if you can get a copy try using someone else's cd. We used to have xp upgrade cd that was warped and would not finish installs. collage sold it to me in just sleves when i got it in the mail (not the best packaging imo)

This is pretty much the only forum I go to here
 
Originally posted by cmosdos
If you've installed linux, it probably borked your master boot record. Take a win98 boot disk of some sorts and boot to a command prompt. navigate to c: and type "fixmbr" hit enter. Do this about 5 times. This rewrites a new TOC for the HD. After doing this type "format c:". although this will format in fat32, its okay. Load up whatever OS your going to install and it will give you an option to leave it as fat32 or you can do NTFS. Whatever you do, don't do quick formats.
Click to expand...

Actually you want to boot from the win98 disk and hit:

fdisk /mbr

and that will do it.

Not trying to correct, but not sure if what you said would work, haven't tried fixmbr before.
 
Originally posted by malingjc
Actually you want to boot from the win98 disk and hit:

fdisk /mbr

and that will do it.

Not trying to correct, but not sure if what you said would work, haven't tried fixmbr before.
Click to expand...

fixmbr does work. I just used it after a linux install got hosed and I needed to install xp. Never used what you suggested. Heh, maybe they both work!
 
Originally posted by malingjc
Actually you want to boot from the win98 disk and hit:

fdisk /mbr

and that will do it.

Not trying to correct, but not sure if what you said would work, haven't tried fixmbr before.
Click to expand...

Ok I did this.

I first did A:\>fdisk /mbr

after it ran that, I did A:>format c:

However it still gets stuck at 22%. However I do get this message:

Trying to recover allocation unit 357,714

I also tried the fixmbr thing. Go to c: right? So c:\>fixmbr
Well, I did that but all i got was an error message saying something like inaccessible drive and giving me three options,
abort
retry
fail

Ehhh... am I royally screwed now?
 
Originally posted by pduan87

However it still gets stuck at 22%. However I do get this message:

Trying to recover allocation unit 357,714
Click to expand...

That seems to be a bad sector allright. It could stay with a few bad sectors, or it could (more likely) spread and soon enough toast your entire HDD. Needless to say all data stored will be unreliably done so.
 
Originally posted by Calavaro
That seems to be a bad sector allright. It could stay with a few bad sectors, or it could (more likely) spread and soon enough toast your entire HDD. Needless to say all data stored will be unreliably done so.
Click to expand...

I cant run scan disk... and chkdsk wont work either.
 
Ok, I fdisked, and then I formatted. I just let it sit for like 30 mins at:

Trying to recover allocation unit 357,714

and it actually went through! Unfortunently, there is a bad sector on the hd (reported 1mb in bad sector out of 6.xx gigs). Is there any way I can fix a bad sector?
 
Nope. The bad sector is marked by the format in the FAT, so that the OS won't use it.
 
The 4gig I had was in the laptop in my sig was doing the same thing and it toasted it's self. I lost everything.


Keep a backup of the hdd regularly.
 
The bad sector is gone and pointless in getting it back. Its possible, just like its possible for you to go to the moon, but is it worth it?

Like most have said, keep backups of your stuff. Once you have a bad sector its like a rash waiting to spread and destroy your HD. If this HD or its contents are of any importance to you I recomend getting rid of it and buying a new one. Good luck!
 
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