Posted by tig on November 17, 19100 at 11:55:20:
In Reply to: Re: fdisk option posted by DAN on November 16, 19100 at 18:00:22:
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the info. But I've done most what you've described. So here's what I am wondering, does doing *FDISK /mbr* wipe out boot sector virus? I'd assume it does.
Also, I've got to the *format c:* step. However, it kept saying "trying to recover allocation unit ######" where ######=some number(I'd assume it is sector number).
So does this eliminate virus case? It's only a broken hard disk? If so, can I skip the recover allocation part since some of the Disk space are still good and formated.
p.s.
Did you say 30 Gig at $30?!! On pricewatch they listed 10 Gig at around $80-90. *shrug*
: MAKE A SEPERATE UTILITY BOOT DISK IN WIN98,,BY
: CLICKING ON MY COMPUTER,,FLOPPY A:[ONLY HIGHLITE
: IT] THEN FILE\FORMAT\FULL CHECKED AND NO LABEL
: WHEN IT'S FORMATED REPEAT THE PROCESS ONLY COPY
: SYSTEM FILES,, FROM THE DIR C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND
: COPY TO THE FLOPPY, ,,FORMAT.COM,,SYS.COM,,CHKDSK.COM,,
: FDISK.EXE,,LABEL.EXE,,,SCANDISK AND FROM THE WINDOWS
: DIRECTOORY,,COPY HIMEM.SYS TO FLOPPY,,
: NEXT YOU NEED ON THE FLOPPY A [CONFIG.SYS] THAT HAS BEEN
: EDITED TO ADD THE LINE
: DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS [NO SPACES]
: BOOT WITH THE FLOPPY AND TYPE FDISK [SPACE]/MBR
: AND HIT ENTER,YOU WILL SEE NO MESSAGE,,NOW REBOOT OFF
: THE FLOPPY AND TYPE FDISK AND HIT ENTER,,DELETE ANY
: PARTITIONS ,,AND THEN CREAT ANOTHER,,BE SURE TO MAKE IT THE
: PARTITION ACTIVE USING OPTION 2 ,
: REBOOT AND FORMAT THE FLOPPY BY,,FORMAT C:
: IF YOU WONT IT BOOTABLE AT THIS TIME FORMAT C: [SPACE] /S
: ,,WHEN FINISHED REBOOT OFF THE FLOPPY AND
: TYPE SCANDISK C:
: HOPE THIS GETS YOU PART WAY THERE,,IT DOES SOUND AS YOU HAVE
: A BOOT SECTOR VIRUS OR THE HARD DRIVE IS FAILING,,NEW
: 30 GIG HD�S CAN BE FOUND AT www.pricewatch.com FOR AROUND $30,,
: BUT I ENJOY PLAYING WITH THEM,,ONE OF THE DISK UTILITYS
: FOR FREE OFF THE MANUFACTORS WEB SITE CAN RESTORE THE DISK
: TO ORIGIONAL STATUS,,BUT IT DOESN�T MARK ANY BAD SPOTS,,,
: DAN
: : My HD will sometimes fail to boot up...I suspect it's virus' deed. However first run of scandisk and then a virusscan did not turn up anything suspicious.
: : But HD will fail to boot from time to time. So I finally decided to use FDisk. I just read in this Forum, one can use FDisk /mbr to erase the master boot; However, when I did a option list on fdisk that came with win98 (1st edition), it didn't seem to have this option.
: : Anyway, when I recreated the partition and stuff...reboot the machine and tried to format the newly created partition, I kept getting the message "Trying to recover allocation unit #######". Does this mean the HD is breaking up? Or does this suggest the IDE cable is acting up?
: : Aslo, this seems to tell me that the HD is partially bad, can I have format to bypass the recovering process? And I can still use whatever good space there are left? So to speed up the format process. The computer has been left running(recovering allocation units) for 2 days. =)