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Win XP does not want to delete partition for reinstall

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I have a mystery. Dell D600 laptop, booting from the Dell OEM XP Pro CD. For clarification, no I did not try to install XP while inside the XP OS. Gets to the partition screen, I press enter to delete the old XP partition, press L to confirm and it tells me the partition can not be deleted. It gives no reason, nor does it give an option to ignore. Dell’s are usually so obedient with reinstalls! Figuring maybe the hard drive had been protected (or corrupted) somehow, I installed a different one (also already had XP on it) and got the same results! Any ideas are welcome!

Topic

Clarifications

In reply to Win XP does not want to delete partition for reinstall

Clarifications

You could try this:

In reply to Win XP does not want to delete partition for reinstall

Darik’s Boot and Nuke – DBAN

That should wipe everything.
Then you can create new partitions, format, and install.

You might also consider scanning the drive with the vendors HDD testing utilities.

But on a Dell….

In reply to You could try this:

you really want to recreate the diags partition and the recovery partition or sometimes these machines do odd things (like refusing to boot up) 🙂

I tried that

In reply to You could try this:

I use DBAN all the time…it is great, isn’t it! I did wipe the first hard drive with DBAN and it gave me non-fatal errors, so I switched to a known good hard drive before tryng the install again. I will attempt to wipe this one as well, but I think I’m best off in a different laptop with it. I believe the D600 is experiencing other issues. Thank you though!

You sure you’re hitting the right partition?

In reply to Win XP does not want to delete partition for reinstall

most Dell PCs have at least three partitions these days. Are you sure you’re not hitting L on the diags partition?

I wish it was that simple

In reply to You sure you’re hitting the right partition?

This one has 2 partitions, the diags and the C:/XP partition. I have done several of these in the past…never had this problem. I have yet to read through all the posts back, but I am beginning to suspect the machine has deeper issues, like it may not be properly recognizing the hard drive.

System Bios or HDD bios?

In reply to I wish it was that simple

A hardware failure is possible….I’ve seen some laptops that just acted flaky.

Win XP

In reply to Win XP does not want to delete partition for reinstall

First of all check if it is the correct paartition and if it is and refuses to delete then do this. Create an MS DOS start up disk , boot from floppy then try to format the partion using MS DOS COMMAND
FORMAT C: then press enter this should work if it doesnt contact me through kevinotakos@yahoo.com

Any way to do that via CD?

In reply to Win XP

This laptop does not have a floppy drive and I don’t have an external floppy at this time. I will hold onto your email address though, thank you, and I will let you know if it doesn’t work after I find an external floppy drive

If you can boot to the recovery console

In reply to Win XP does not want to delete partition for reinstall

you can use DiskPart to remove and recreate the Partition. Or if it is only a Recovery CD set the Windows Vista Recovery CD can be used to Boot your PC to enable you to create a Primary Partition and set it active.

Creating a Windows Vista Recovery CD
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=622

Download from here:
http://coblitz.codeen.org/neosmart.net/downloads/guides/Vista_Repair/Vista_Recovery_Disc_x86.iso

Burn it to a CD with Nero or equivalent software.

Boot from the CD and on the first screen click Next, click Repair your computer, click Next and select Command Prompt.

A Description of the Diskpart Command-Line Utility

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

Edit: missed a bit

If you think that it may be Hard drive problems

In reply to If you can boot to the recovery console

You can use the Hard Drive Makers Testing Utility to Test the Drive which can be downloaded from below.
Hitachi / IBM
Western Digital
Fujitsu
Seagate
Samsung

[Author]

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