by Robby » May 23, 2002 @ 1:56pm
i've had this prob before, and several ones similar to it when i used to piss about on 486s and the like.
firstly, boot it with a boot cd or boot disk so you can get some kind of command prompt. now look at what kind of error message you are getting, its it says you have an unrecognisable media type or sth like, try a normal format c:
if this fails, and it probably will, go into fdisk delete all the partitions, restart and try to add a primary partition. this may or may not work.
next up, with a win 98,2k, or probably XP (never used XP) cd pop it in, and get as far into the install as poss, you might be able to get to the bit where you reformat your drive in 2k at least.
if none of this works, here one i tried once:
get to your hd, and set the jumpers to cable select.
boot up, get to a command prmpt somehow and see what it thinks of the HD, it should be now be completely scrambled. you may now be able to fdisk it if you booted with a windows cd, but siwtch it back onto slave or master before you try anything.
if no kind of scrambling it and then getting it going will work, your screwed, your drive could just be fried, i 've had a few ones like that.
and i know all this info is a bit vague, but just try to really make a mess of it, then windows should be able to fix it for you.
you could try partition magic as well, never tried it on an empty machine but i think it might work.
Why?
A little help please... :)
I dont think I can send it back even if i had a warrenty left because I opend it up to see if something was physically damaged. Anyone know of any good tools to scan a hd for physical damage? other than scan disk which says everything is fine. Btw I checked in my bios settings and it says I dont even have a hd 
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