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FDISK: Anyone that is good with fdisk please help!

Josep

eyerun4phun
Ok, i have winxp installed on 2 hard drives, don't ask why, i just do. I was trying to get rid of the selection on startup to decide which operating system(they were both the same choice, just a different hard drive) So i put in a win98 boot disk and ran fdisk, I deleted the Non-dos partition from the c drive, which is the drive i don't want, and when i restarted, it gave me the error: NTLDR is missing, then it said to press control-alt-delete to restart. SO i went back to fdisk and created primary dos-partition back to the hard drive that i didn't really want, and NOW when i restart it says: Missing Operating system, ok, so its not detecting the os on my c drive, but i don't want it to! i have another operating system installed on the d drive, and i want it to run off that one! please help! in any way!
 

Malcolm

Not a Moderator
ok, stick back in that old Win98 start up disk, get to da prompt (DOS Prompt with out CD-ROM support) and type this:
Code:
fdisk /mbr
this will reset the master boot record on your hard disk and should make everything all right and well, but make sure that the partiton that you want to boot is active first, you can do this by choosing option 3 (i believe) from the fdisk menu.

Good luck
 
OP
Josep

Josep

eyerun4phun
DAMMIT! for some gay reason that did not work, it still give me the same error message: Missing operating system:(
 

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Argh, you messed up. The problem is even if your booting onto an OS thats on the D: drive. The system files (command.com, msdos.sys, io.sys) and a few other configuration files for multiple operating systems are located on the default boot drive which is C: If you delete these, it has no clue where to look for them. They have to be on the root directory of the C: drive regardless of where the OS is installed. My reccomendation switch your HD cables around, but then the system files still won't be there, so it would be best to reinstall after doing that. You should always have your primary OS on the C: drive to eliminate other hassles and complications, If this means opening the computer and switching HD cables, I'd strongly reccomend doing so before you install the OS.
 

rob in london

amiga nut
if you have an operating system on a secondary hard drive, then you would have to either swap the drive cables( like eagle said) so its the primary master, or see if you can change the bios settings to load it where it is. theres still no guarantee it would find the os, in fact it probably wont, it sounds like youve deleted the boot loader, which would have been on the first drive anyway. you shouldn't fuck about with fdisk unless you know what your doing, but i suppose your learning that the hard way heh.

the only other thing you might try would be to find a more powerful partition table editor than m$'s fdisk and put the partition back *exactly* where it was before, assuming you know what type it was and havent formated the space. good luck, you'll need it
 

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Oh, I forgot about the repair thing. But I'd still switch the drives around.
 

Slougi

New member
Eagle: having XP on D: actually is a good thing, it confuses most virii and trojans that are around.
 
OP
Josep

Josep

eyerun4phun
hehe, yea well i just formated 'em both;) hehe, ooo well, i kinda needed to do that anyway, yes i am in the midst of learning, and yes in a hard way;) its ok tho, everything i could have wanted was pretty much backed up on cd's:) i really don't know which one i should put the os on, you guys are kinda confusing, eheh, but i'll probably put it on d, or switch cables around and make my D one the C one
 

Slougi

New member
Put it on D:
From what I gather it's the faster drive. And as I said preiously it blocks out almost 60% of the virii and trojans which look for c:\windows.
 
OP
Josep

Josep

eyerun4phun
Ok, i just got done formatting drive d, now when i try to select drive d to be the drive with the operating system, it says that there is already an operating system on that partition and that it is not recommended to do this, wtf?! i just formatted, isn't there NOTHING on that hard drive right after a format?!

uh help!:) im at that option right now on my other comp
 
OP
Josep

Josep

eyerun4phun
OK, finally got it working, note to self, DON'T JACK AROUND WITH FDISK! hehe, at least if you don't know what you are doing, now to get to downloading alllllllll those programs!:)
 

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Slougi said:
Eagle: having XP on D: actually is a good thing, it confuses most virii and trojans that are around.

yes, it confuses virii and other less professional programs that you may want on your computer.
 

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Josep said:
hehe, yea well i just formated 'em both;) hehe, ooo well, i kinda needed to do that anyway, yes i am in the midst of learning, and yes in a hard way;) its ok tho, everything i could have wanted was pretty much backed up on cd's:) i really don't know which one i should put the os on, you guys are kinda confusing, eheh, but i'll probably put it on d, or switch cables around and make my D one the C one

I'd just like you to know, I learned everything I know about Windows installations by trial and error. I've formatted and re-installed any given version of windows (combined) on my one computer over 100 times. I used to tinker with windows, screw it up and then reinstall all the time. I don't do that much anymore though. But it is a great way to learn about the intricacies of windows.
 

Eagle

aka Alshain
Moderator
Josep said:
OK, finally got it working, note to self, DON'T JACK AROUND WITH FDISK! hehe, at least if you don't know what you are doing, now to get to downloading alllllllll those programs!:)

FDISK can be very dangerous, I ruined about 1mb of a HD once cause I deleted the partition while it was compressed. Bad move. Anyway, you should be very careful not to mess around with FDISK too much, it can mess up things if your not extremely carefull. Usually, unless you want to create virtual drives or change the primary partition etc. dont use it. FDISK should never be used as a mere means of erasing a hard disk. While this generally won't damage the hard drive, it leaves room for mistakes that will.
 

Gorxon

New member
Administrator
As long as you're in windows (2000 or xp) the ms hard drive tools works pretty good....if you are not in windows you can boot from the windows cd (you DO own it don't you:D ?) and use the proggy there....that one is not too good, but it usually does the trick...
 

Tk64

The Other Village Idiot
Jeez, the missing OS thing was probably because of a missing boot.ini (If you run 2000/XP look for it in the root of one of your HDs. It's hidden. Along with it you should find another hidden one, ntldr.com I think.) - 2000 at least uses it, why wouldn't XP?


P.S. Messing around with boot.ini will let you change the boot menu, in other words add another OS to the menu or you can get rid of one. Since I have a single HD booting 2k pro:

Code:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional"/fastdetect

(wacky line breaks = not displayed right, you should be able to figure it out)
 
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