| Author |
Message |
Ian Davies
| | Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2001 - 6:58 am: | |
I'm trying to fix a Tiny PC I recently got off a friend. The hard drive was formatted (and he may have used fdisk as well, but I'm not sure) before he gave it to me. I've tried the installing Windows (both 95 and ME) but I get the error message 'compressed or disk-cache utility on hard drive' and 'HPFS or NTFS installed' and windows will not install. I don't know of any of these things or what they do. I've tried the manufacturers recovery disks, but that didn't work. A strange thing that may be related it that when I use a floppy boot disk, I get info to say that the hard-drive is connected correctly (lists the drive on start-up) but I can't access it from DOS prompt! C: takes me to the CD-ROM.
Anyone know anything about this???? |
Vera (Vera)
| | Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2001 - 7:28 am: | |
hi
it sounds like there is a non-dos partotion setup on the hard drive. use a bootable floppy, run fdisk, create a dos partition set as active. this should do it for you |
Vera (Vera)
| | Posted on Thursday, April 12, 2001 - 5:20 pm: | |
forgot to mention after fdisk you do need to format with the /s switch to copy system files |
Ian Davies
| | Posted on Saturday, April 14, 2001 - 9:26 am: | |
Hi Vera, I checked the partitioning with fdisk. I've only got the one partition and it is already set to active and is the primary DOS partition. I can't format the harddrive though as when I type format C: /s I get the message, 'cannot format network drive'. I think this is because it is trying to format the CD-ROM drive (when I type C:dir, it gives me the list of what's on the CD). Strangely, I noticed in fdisk that it listed the harddrive as drive C (which I would normally expect but out of fdisk my machine thinks C is the CD-ROM).
Ian |
V (Vera)
| | Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2001 - 5:56 am: | |
hmm, i haven't haven't had the chance to work with networking. i know of someone who aquired a network pc which needed a harddrive to make it a standalone.
some thoughts
was this mainboard configured for networking ?
setup to boot from the cd-rom if it can't find the host c:\ drive?
does it actually have a harddrive of it's own? |
Ian Davies
| | Posted on Monday, April 16, 2001 - 12:51 pm: | |
The PC wasn't used on a network previously which is the weird thing. It does have it's own hard drive (I see the details correctly listed when the machine is booting using a floppy).
I've managed to get rid of the HPFS/NTFS error. I deleted the partition on the harddrive using fdisk and then inserted a new active primary dos partition. This got rid of the HPFS/NTFS problem and I can now format the hard drive and look at the contents when I type C:. Yippee! And the cd-rom is d: However, i still get the 'compression or disk-cache utility on hard drive' message when I try and install windows and it stops installation.
Ian |
V (Vera)
| | Posted on Monday, April 16, 2001 - 3:06 pm: | |
not sure, but a thought that comes to mind
is your startup disk OEM or a home created one. if it's a homemade one i wonder if the config.sys and autoexec.bat files contain references to a cache utility thats being loaded??? at least your getting somewhere. |
Ian Davies
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2001 - 1:19 am: | |
You could be onto something there. The startup disk I was using is homemade so could reference a cache utility as you say. I have tried creating a start-up disk using my other computer that works but this has not got rid of the problem. I will try and find the original OEM start-up disk. Thanks for the advice.
Ian |
V (Vera)
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2001 - 7:28 am: | |
http://www.bootdisk.com/
http://www.putergeek.com./downloads/
if the only drivers you need to load are for a cdrom drive then you should be able to download a boot disk from one of these sites
just make sure it has the same version of dos as the version of win95 you are using
hope this helps |
wulfie
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 17, 2001 - 1:02 pm: | |
Go to Microsoft site and search for DELPART.EXE which is specifically designed to get rid of unix and ntfs partitions when fdisk fails. (make a boot disk with it) |
Ian Davies
| | Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2001 - 2:09 pm: | |
Success!! Thanks Vera and Wulfie. I used Delpart.exe and the boot disks and have just finished installing windows. I have some minor problems with the CD drivers not working but I can fix those when I have time. Once again, thanks.
Ian |
V (Vera)
| | Posted on Friday, April 20, 2001 - 5:27 am: | |
glad your up and on your way. always something new to learn. delpart.exe is a good thing to know about |
friend
| | Posted on Thursday, August 2, 2001 - 3:23 am: | |
Why DOS formatting is needed after disk partitioning to prepare a hard disk for use?
Is there any cache memory in HDD?
Why was it that the earlier PCs could only use no more than about 500 MB of hard disk space? |
