Laptop hard disk won't stay partitioned and formatted

[spasserium]

I have a Dell Latitude CPiR series laptop. I've been trying to cleanly reinstall win98SE. I am able to fdisk and format the hard drive and then to load win98, all seemingly successfully. However, and here's the problem, when I restart the computer after its been turned off, I get a message saying that there's no bootable sector on the hard drive. And when boot from a floppy and fdisk, the hard drive is no longer partitioned.

And this occurs even though the laptop remains plugged in using the AC adapter.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Mark

 

[PeterGriff]

You may be losing the hard drive settings from the BIOS (dead BIOS battery). If it defaults to different settings it will not be able to read what was done previously.

Other than that it doesnt sound too good for the hard drive.

Peter G

 

[rockerfellerz]

I would download a copy of Powermax from Maxtor. the prog makes a floppy, use it to boot and it can do a thorough check of the drive. It will pick up stuff that windows won't and also can do a low level format which will return the drive to factory specs(If possible, it may be damaged beyond repair)
I would also check the battery as per PeterGriff.

If you're going through Hell...keep going... (Winston Churchill)
RocKeRFelLerZ

 

[edfair]

You might want to try a zerofill/lowlevel format on the drive before you install again. And use a fresh boot disk to do the original fdisk and formatting. Or at least run the floppy through a late signature virus check.

You might want to do the fdisk and formatting from the floppy and check that the drive is usable from the DOS level before you put the Win on.

There is at least one virus that relocates the boot sector / partition table in such a way that the normal system build utilities don't work. It has been a while since I saw it, and I don't remember the name, but it caused the same sort of problem.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[spasserium]

Ed,

Sorry, but this is new territory for me. If I do have a boot virus like the one you mentioned, will a low-level/zero-fill format get rid of it? If not, is there a virus program (hopefully free) that can be run from a bootable floppy?

Many thanks,

Mark

 

[PeterGriff]

Most virus programs allow you to make "rescue disks" that will boot from floppies (usually more than one required - 5 last time I tried with Nortons). Not all programs are great at removing viruses though (esp. the free ones). Try and find someone that has Nortons, or try downloading a 30-day trial from Symantec then creating the rescue disks (after updating)- should do the job.

Peter G

 

[spasserium]

Peter et al.,

For those of you who are are familiar with Powermax, I get the following error (E08) - failed drive read/writer bugger test. I've contacted maxtor, but I haven't heard back

What should I do?

Thanks,

Mark

 

[PeterGriff]

Non-maxtor drive. Seems like it will only work on Maxtor drives!! Try the vendor of your hard drive for a similar util.

Peter G

 

[rockerfellerz]

It works on most drives, I just used it on a Samsung last night, And it has worked on fujitsu drives. What test did you run to get that error? Will it do a low level format?
Here is a link to some info on powermax:

http://www.maxtor.com/en/documentation/manuals/powermax_guide_en.pdf

If you're going through Hell...keep going... (Winston Churchill)
RocKeRFelLerZ

 

[edfair]

Re: Will it get rid...
Yes, if you have something that relocates the partition table the low level will get rid of it. It gets rid of everything. You should be back to totally blank hard drive ready to fdisk and format.

That said, you can have other problems that affect a hard drive in such a way that they don't like to write to the boot sector. I've had several that failed to write, wiping the windows installation. DOS would take and work but the windows would wipe out. My suspicion was a problem with the hard drive controller but I never followed through on the diagnostics.

Since this is a previously working drive I don't think it would apply to you.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[mainegeek]

There may be a drive overlay installed on it as well.

 

[spasserium]

What is a drive overlay? And is there a way to deal with any problems it could cause?

 

[edfair]

Drive overlays are machine code to grab standard disk accesses to the drive and reconfigure them to fit the drive layout that has been installed on the drive. Modifies the boot sector and file allocations to allow a larger drive than the BIOS is capable of handling, usually by jiggering the sector per cluster value.

When one is installed no OS can access the drive until the overlay is patched into the OS.

Fdisk /mbr wipes out the overlay code on the drive and fdisk allows you to create the new partitions. And you have done both, haven't you?

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.