[wannabe1]

Type fdisk and press ENTER

At this query, Do you wish to enable large disk support?..type Y and press ENTER

[Advertisements]

I still dont get that message. It hangs in the same place.

ps - I need to take off in a minute. Can I check back in with you later? I really appreciate all of the help !!!!!

[beckcraigd]

I still dont get that message. It hangs in the same place.

ps - I need to take off in a minute. Can I check back in with you later? I really appreciate all of the help !!!!!

[wannabe1]

Yes...I'm going to point you to the diagnostic software for your drive...we'll try it again with their own software.

Do you have a cd burner?

[beckcraigd]

Yes, on another computer so I can burn a disk if you need me to.

Send the info and I will dive into it later and post back.

Thanks again, and sorry for having to take off......

[wannabe1]

beckcraigd...

Ran into a bit of a hitch... ...HP used three different manufacturers for their hard drives on your model machine. Do you happen to know what brand hard drive is in your machine? It would be a maxtor, an IBM, or a Hitachi...

We can try the maxtor software...Max Blast 4...if your drive is a maxtor and sometimes even if it isn't, this might do the trick. Just download the file to the desktop, double click on it, and put a floppy in the drive to create the disk. Then start the machine with the floppy in the drive and see if it detects your drive.

The others are available on the HP site, but will take a bit of doing to make them work...we'll try them if the maxtor disk fails.

wannabe1

Edited by wannabe1, 23 November 2005 - 10:18 PM.

[wannabe1]

beckcraigd...

Try using the XP bootdisk set to format to Fat32...if that works, try installing the 98SE.

wannabe1

[beckcraigd]

Last week I tried the Wondows XP Start Disks (all 6 of them) to reformat the drive. It ran for hours and looked like it worked, but when I rebooted it was like nothing had been done. So I tried it two more times.

Let me try it one more time now and let you know what I get.

On the hard drive, I am not sure what drive I have. It was replaced a while back after the first crash and I dont know what they put in except that it may be a 40gig instead of 10gig. Do you know how to open the laptop to look? It is usually easy on most laptops, but I can not figure out how to open this one. The battery pops out and I can open the little door where the RAM is located. But in the other corner where I would think the hard drive is located, there is no door or screws......

[beckcraigd]

I tried the reformat from the Windows XP disks and here is what happened:

I loaded all 6 disks in the floppy drive to reach the Recovery Console. I was given a C:\. I typed format c: /fs:fat32 and it said "the specified drive is not valid, or there is no disk in the drive.

So back at the C:\, I typed "map" and it said:
A: \Device\Floppy0
D: \Device\CdRom0

Then it returns me to the C:\.

Does this mean the hard drive is not showing up or is dead?

[wannabe1]

beckcraigd...

This is all pointing to another HDD failure...I wonder if your machine is getting too hot when it is running and burning up the hard drives.

Because this was the second drive for this machine I was working on the assumption that the chances of a second failure were faily remote, however, all the troubleshooting so far indicates a bad HDD.

• fdisk will delete partitions, install partitions, but the drive integrity check fails...hard drive failure
• XP boot disks fail to find the HDD...hard drive failure
• Unable to format the partition...hard drive failure

At this point, I'm not sure what else we can try on this machine...

If you end up replacing the HDD again, you might look into a laptop cooler to go with it...inexpensive protection when compared to the price HP wants for their drives.

Let's see what some of the other Trusted Techs think...I'll ask a few to "chime in" with their thoughts on this.

wannabe1

[beckcraigd]

I was thinking the same thing but did not want to admit it. If the drive is gone, do you know if I can just go to BestBuy and get any 2.5" hard drive to replace it? I finally found some good info on removing the harddrive:
http://h20000.www2.h...jectID=tis02342

and I found a guy that posted some drivers if I want to go with Windows 98 (although I might need help as I dont know what to do with them):
http://sdas.eu.org/~gibas/n5415/

I am not familiar with the cooler option. What is that all about?

I really do appreciate you guys working so hard to help me. I would love to avoid having to buy another laptop if I can rig this one to work on Windows 98.

ps - I dont know if this matters, but the table does get warm after the computer has run for a while. The battery has been dead for some time since I have been too cheap to buy a new battery. Would it make any difference if I bought a new battery?

[gerryf]

download this and burn it as a cd
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

run some disk diagnostics on the drive

[wannabe1]

Input from Keith....

Would duff memory cause it

Would it make any difference if he installed it as a slave in another PC to see if he can load anything on it

Would loading it as the primary drive in another PC and trying to install XP on it, just to see if it does help determine anything

Keith

[beckcraigd]

gerryf:

I have the disk burned and ready to go.

wannabe1:

I dont have another laptop to try the drive in.

[wannabe1]

beckcraigd...

I dont have another laptop to try the drive in.

I'm just passing on any thoughts and ideas I get from other techs...

gerryf has a couple ideas we may be able to try a little later...try running some of the diagnostics from the UBCD and see what happens...

A good Laptop Cooler.

wannabe1

[beckcraigd]

The disk I burned works in my good computer, but not in the HP Pavilion. I think the drive has trouble reading burned disks. It may be time to either find a cheap harddrive to try or just give the laptop a trip off the roof. Any suggestions on where to find the least expensive harddrive to try that might work in this machine?