WTH!!! Need help...

L

los7883

New Member
My friend has an old HP computer and he had a trial version of XP on it, well the trial expired and he now wants to go back to his old OS, i think it was Windows ME. Well he gave it to me to see if i could do it...and here's the issue.

When i go to log in, it won't even let me get to the desktop after i pass the login screen, it prompts me to activate XP...the only other option it gives is to log off...so i can't revert back to the old OS from there...I tried formatting the hard drive and when in MS DOS i type format c: i get "Bad Command or File Name"...i'm getting that whether i'm at a: or d: when i type in the format c:

So i go and put in a Windows 98 disc and it goes all the way to the screen where it says that it's going to format the hard drive, i click yes and it gets to like 2% then says, that it encountered an error on the hard drive and cannot be formatted, and that it will now exit setup, and then takes me to the DOS prompt.

I went and FDISK'd it and cleared it out, but still getting same error...is there something else i can do to get it cleared out?
 
you're gonna need an operating system such as windows xp or 2000 to format the drive. im guessing that the drive was formatted to NTFS when xp was installed. older operating systems cant recognise that file format which is why you cant format the drive.
bear in mind you need to format to fat32 in order to install ME or whatever you friend wanted
 
well i think i really messed up then...i got mad and took the hard drive an plugged it into MY computer as a slave, and was going to format it that way, but it kept locking up my computer and wouldn't boot up all the way...so i put it back in his computer and turned it on, and i started getting a "No Operating System found on disk" error...crap! :mad: am i going to have to get him a new hard drive?
 
problem there, xp doesnt have a boot disk (floppy) you have to put it on a cd...and i did that and the computer didn't like it, was giving me non-system disk or something like that, and asked me to remove it and hit any key to continue, then put in a 98 boot disk and took me back to the same issue i had earlier with the failed hard drive format...
 
use the xp installation disk to format the drive. just set the option to boot from cd in the bios by setting it to the first device and reboot with the xp cd in the drive
 
He doesn't have the XP installation disk, he got the comp from a family member who got it from bla bla bla...i shouldn't have even messed with this computer, but now I feel like I broke it so now i have to fix it...
 
well its not a hardware problem, the drive can be formatted with the right tools, ideally it would be with a windows 2000 or xp installation disk. also creating a set of windows xp startup disks should allow you to do it
 
what would be the quickest and easiest way to format the hard drive, i can get it up and running once i format it, but would i leave it in it's current case and try and format it that way or try to plug it into my comp again as a slave and format it that way...
 
problem there, xp doesnt have a boot disk (floppy) you have to put it on a cd
Click to expand...

Yes it does. Of course it takes 6 floppy disks instead of 1. Google for it.

The reason why it said "No Operating System found on disk" is most likely the boot sequence changed in the bios, I've seen this a thousand times. I've failed to read each post so if this has been suggested I'm sorry. Have you tried booting off the CD? My copy of windows was not bootable but I made it bootable with a program but this was awhile ago and I cannot name the program now. In your case if there is a floppy drive I recommend you download the floppy boot disks for Windows XP and format the HD to FAT 32. Then install Windows ME.
 
Found them...will need to go get some new floppy's just to be on the safe side and will try it out when I go home...if that fails, then i found a software program that runs in MS DOS that will format the hard drive (or so they say)...thanks for the help.
 
Download and burn to a CD Damn Small Linux (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/)
Boot to the CD in the PC you to format the disk in.

Make sure the disk you want to format is the ONLY disk connected in the PC. I don't want you to erase another disk by accident.

Once booted open the "XTerminal" icon.
Type "sudo cfdisk /dev/hda" at the command prompt
Highligh and delete any partitions shown.
After all partitions are deleted create a new partition and change the type to 0C (zero C) Fat32 LBA.
Select the "Bootable" option.
Select "Write"

That should do it!

Good Luck
 
You can use FDISK to delete the nondos partition and then repartition and then format using FAT32. Thats how you go about getting rid of an NTFS partition using the FDISK program.
 
Ok i FINALLY got it up and running, had to use all kinds of stuff to get it working, FDISK, KILLDISK, FORMAT from DOS prompt, then installed the OS...my question is...now i'm getting this error message on startup:

SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disk 0:Maxtor 34098H4-(PM)

Warning: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.

Press F1 to continue.


How do i fix or get rid of that error?
 
thats hard drive self monitoring, that happens when problems are starting to occur with the hard drive. you can stop the message by turning off the smart feature in the bios but thats not the point of having that feature
 
Oh yea i went into the BIOS and was able to see where SMART Monitoring was enabled but it did not give me the option to disable it...on all fields that could be changed it showed them like this [Enabled] or [Disabled] but for Smart Monitoring it showed it only as Enabled (without brackets) therefore wouldn't let me disable it...any ideas?
 
it probably automatically enables itself if the drive supports it. but seriously, those messages only normally come up when the hard drive is beginning to fail
 
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