formatting/partioning

[resStealth]

i to reformat my harddrive, but im a noob with formatting/partioning. i made a startup disk and put fdisk, format and scandisk on it, but when i boot it gives me a big thing of text but wont let me run anything it also says something about doing the partioning wrong can destroy the drive. can someone please tell me what to do?

 

[bendixG15]

Got to know what is your OS
and
how you made startup disk.

 

[Xtremist]

Use this to make a bootdisk, not by copying stuff yourself:

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Personally I'd use the Windows 98 SE OEM one, but that's just me. When you boot up, run fdisk and it'll walk you through it.

Honestly though, you need to repartition/format... why? To install an OS I'd assume, most likely something like Windows XP? Or most others for that matter... Most of the OS installers allow you to partition/format right in them so really the bootdisk might be a unnecessary waste of time.

Also, when you read about repartitioning can "destroy the drive" that doesn't really mean physicall ruin it. Simply that when you delete a partition, all of the data that was on it is 'basically' gone. So if you accidently screw up a partition, you will "destroy the data" in a sense, not the physical drive. Good luck!

 

[GunDog]

Originally posted by: resStealth
i to reformat my harddrive, but im a noob with formatting/partioning. i made a startup disk and put fdisk, format and scandisk on it, but when i boot it gives me a big thing of text but wont let me run anything it also says something about doing the partioning wrong can destroy the drive. can someone please tell me what to do?

Is that destroy the data or the drive?

Also, is this that same LAPTOP mentioned in a thread posted below?

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=1502989&enterthread=y

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=1502951&enterthread=y

To help you we need more information. I do see you made a startup cd.