Help Please!

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Discussion

rubyV8S

Original Poster:

132 posts

268 months

Monday 25th August 2003
quotequote all
Hope someone can help as I'm all thumbs when it comes to computers & stuff!

I have bought a new base unit with minimal software installed, just Windows 98. It has a 60gig hard drive which was partitioned(?) into - C:20 Gig and D: 40 Gig.

After a couple of days, have been having problems with it locking up, etc and finally it crashed completely. So I decided to reinstall 98 from disc but now Windows can only 'see' drive C with the 20 gig available and not the entire drive. If I run FDISK from the Dos prompt it shows Drive C = 60 gig???

How can I get windows to see the entire drive?

Many thanks or any help.

Cheers
Mark

docevi1

10,430 posts

255 months

Monday 25th August 2003
quotequote all
Whats the CPU/mobo? What does the BIOS show the drive as?

To be that would suggest that the system is too old to recognise the entire drive (a symtom of old machines). It could also be that the drive is wussed out! What if you run fDisk, remove all the partitions and restart?

Stefan

>> Edited by docevi1 on Monday 25th August 21:12

rubyV8S

Original Poster:

132 posts

268 months

Monday 25th August 2003
quotequote all
the cpu is an Athlon 1800+, not sure on motherboard, BUT it's all brand new stuff. If I run FDISK is says there are no partitions to remove!?

bobthebench

398 posts

270 months

Monday 25th August 2003
quotequote all
Can depend on age of Mobo, though if it seen it before, should still be able to.

Have you ran fdisk to delete all existing partitions then create new ones, even the same size ? Once partitions set, format each partition. Could be that while in fdisk you've altered a partition but not re-formatted that partition individually. Even if clear then reset it as it was.

rubyV8S

Original Poster:

132 posts

268 months

Monday 25th August 2003
quotequote all
I'll try again running fdisk, see if I can repartition the disk and reformat! Don't really have much of a clue what I'm doing tho, just following the prompts and trying to decypher the guide to Windows book I have!!

roop

6,012 posts

291 months

Monday 25th August 2003
quotequote all
I had a similar problem not so long ago. Turned out the version of FDISK I have could only go to a maximum partition size of 40GB. Perhaps get a newer version of FDISK...?

Roop

onedsla

1,114 posts

263 months

Tuesday 26th August 2003
quotequote all
Let fdisk make the maximum size partition, now install win 98. Use disk administrator to partition & format your d: drive.