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Fdisk and XP

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9 replies

by brucea52

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An XP box became infected and was totally hosed. I tried to fdisk it to rebuild it but there were 3 partitions listed, non-dos,ntsf and fat32. I couldn't delete the first two using fdisk so that I could start rebuilding the drive. I recall using a small script once that totally erased everythinh but can't recall it. Any ideas?

9 replies

by jim phelps

I have always been able to delete a non-DOS partition using FDISK, if I boot with a Windows 9.x boot disk.

Can you see these partitions in FDISK? If so, then you should be able to delete them in FDISK.

Check your hard drive cable. Make sure it is connected tightly. If so, then try a known good cable.

Try putting the drive in another computer. Maybe there is a BIOS problem in the computer you are using. Or try putting it back in the original computer, if it is now in a different computer.

SCSI vs IDE? Make sure you are using the correct drive controller for this drive.

Is there some strange partitioning scheme?

Perhaps Norton Wipedisk would wipe the drive.

If you boot to DOS using Winternals NTFS-DOS, or if you boot with Winternals ERD Commander, you might be able to wipe the drive that way.

Good luck.

by hawgfan

I am told that you can boot on a MSDOS 6.22 boot disk, run FDISK and it will allow you to delete partitions that a Win 9x boot disk will not.

by jim phelps

DOS 6.22 (along with Windows 3.11) was my OS of choice till I finally bit the bullet and went to Windows 95.

I was an early user of Windows 95, but the early versions were SO full of bugs that I finally FDISKed my hard drive and put DOS and Win 95 on it. It ran GREAT!

Then, a couple of years later, when M$ finally came out with a stable version of Windows 95, I went with that, and it worked fine.

by venkat_1781

USe the diskpart winXP utility to del the Partision.

boot the computer with the XP cd and Use the recovery consols and delete the same using the command diskpart

by jackofalltech

Do a search for
PD0321: REMOVING NON-DOS PARTITIONS WITH DEBUG

The article is too long to paste here.

Ralph

by curious-as-always

I had the same problem once.
Couldnt delete partitions either with any fdisk version.
A bootable Linux-CD did the trick (in my case a RedHat6.2 intallation CD)
just before I was asked where to install Linux I had the choice to (re)partition my disk.
I used this to fix the unreachable partitions
Appearently does Unix/Linux understand this job better than windows does.
I also believe you can fix it using ghost GDISK
Hope this helps a bit

by don_c

The frist thing you need to do is to format the partitions if posible I find this helpful in these kind of situations Then I get out my win98 boot disk and start the computer with cdrom support insert my XP cd and find fdisk on it this should be the latest and greatest version of fdisk then try to delete the other two or reinstall windows on a partition and use partition magic !!!!!!! Good luck

by hal 9000

Chose delete non DOS partition in FDISK under the delete option with a Windows 9X floppy you can delete all the FAT types as well as NTFS, NFS or any other partition type that you care to mention.

But if you are still having trouble then just down load Wipe from the Hatachi web site and then load with a Win 9X boot disk and then change floppies and run wipe "0" where 0 is the drive that you want to wipe it does a much better job anyway so it is probavly a better option. However if you are attempting to clean up a HDD for resale in a secondhand computer this while claiming that any data will be unrecoverable isn't necessarly correct as it is possible to recover any data that had been written to the drive but for reloads it works just fine.

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