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Can't boot or access C drive

R

rj

Flightless Bird
Windows XP won't boot. I tried reinstalling Windows but keep getting a blue
screen even after deleting, recreating and formatting the C drive. I booted
with an MSDOS floppy but can't access C drive. It may be a boot sector
virus. How do I format the entire hard drive so I can do a clean install?
 
P

Pegasus [MVP]

Flightless Bird
"rj" <rjnothere@netzero.net> wrote in message
news:ulZXW#DJLHA.1868@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Windows XP won't boot. I tried reinstalling Windows but keep getting a
> blue
> screen even after deleting, recreating and formatting the C drive. I
> booted
> with an MSDOS floppy but can't access C drive. It may be a boot sector
> virus. How do I format the entire hard drive so I can do a clean install?
>

You can boot the machine with your MSDOS boot diskette, then run fdisk.exe
and use it to delete all existing partitions. Certain partitions cannot be
deleted in this way - use delpart.exe
(http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm) to get rid of them.

Note, however, that the Windows XP setup program is just as capable of
deleting any pre-existing partition. If it blue-screens before you get to
this point then you may have a problem with your hard disk. You need to
download and run the diagnostic program that its manufacturer has on his web
site.
 
J

Jim

Flightless Bird
On Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:03:01 -0400, "rj" <rjnothere@netzero.net>
wrote:

>Windows XP won't boot. I tried reinstalling Windows but keep getting a blue
>screen even after deleting, recreating and formatting the C drive. I booted
>with an MSDOS floppy but can't access C drive. It may be a boot sector
>virus. How do I format the entire hard drive so I can do a clean install?
>

It will tell you on the blue screen what the problem is ; read and
post .
 
K

Kenny

Flightless Bird
Try the Ultimate Boot CD, it's free.
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
If it's the same version I've got it loads a cut down version of XP together
with a number of useful tools and utilities.

Kenny
"rj" <rjnothere@netzero.net> wrote in message
news:ulZXW%23DJLHA.1868@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Windows XP won't boot. I tried reinstalling Windows but keep getting a
> blue
> screen even after deleting, recreating and formatting the C drive. I
> booted
> with an MSDOS floppy but can't access C drive. It may be a boot sector
> virus. How do I format the entire hard drive so I can do a clean install?
>
>
 
H

HeyBub

Flightless Bird
rj wrote:
> Windows XP won't boot. I tried reinstalling Windows but keep getting
> a blue screen even after deleting, recreating and formatting the C
> drive. I booted with an MSDOS floppy but can't access C drive. It may
> be a boot sector virus. How do I format the entire hard drive so I
> can do a clean install?

1. You do NOT need to format ANY drive that will ultimately contain an
operating system. The installation process handles that chore.

2. That you cannot install XP from a CD is evidence that your C drive is
broken, busted, dead, singing in the heavenly choir (well, it COULD simply
be disconnected or without power, but I assume you checked that...)
 
P

Paul

Flightless Bird
rj wrote:
> Windows XP won't boot. I tried reinstalling Windows but keep getting a blue
> screen even after deleting, recreating and formatting the C drive. I booted
> with an MSDOS floppy but can't access C drive. It may be a boot sector
> virus. How do I format the entire hard drive so I can do a clean install?
>
>

Do you need, and have you installed an F6 driver, for the
storage interface you're using ? SATA now, for example, comes
with BIOS settings of IDE, AHCI, and RAID. The latter two
need drivers on WinXP. Only the vanilla IDE mode, might work
with no driver. And an installer CD of at least SP1 or later
is recommended for that case.

The blue screen may indicate "inaccessible boot volume" or the like.
Stop errors are listed here. A "7b" is an inaccessible boot volume.

http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm

With the right MSDOS floppy, you can access the drive. The MSDOS
floppy I made while running Win98, can access FAT32 partitions.

And this one, will also access NTFS partitions. The only problem
with this product, is it doesn't support LFN (long file names),
so is virtually useless other than to prove there is an NTFS
partition present. There are plenty of other free tools, that
are more useful than this (like a Linux LiveCD or even the
GParted LiveCD). A Linux LiveCD can read or write to FAT32 or
NTFS partitions. Try Ubuntu for example.

http://www.free-av.com/en/download/11/avira_ntfs4dos_personal.html

You can use a downloadable disk diagnostic, to prove the hard
drive is still good. Other than that, you may need to press
F6 and install the correct driver for the SATA or IDE
interface. Since we know you have a floppy interface, this
should be easy to do :)

Paul
 
P

pjp

Flightless Bird
Boot with the DOS disk (98SE recovery floppy is good for this). Run Fdisk
and delete, then recreate the existing partition. Then format the drive
(after a reboot using floppy). Then run "sys c" to put the DOS system on the
drive. That will get you to where hard disk boots to a DOS prompt but note
you'll have no access to cd drives etc. without specific drivers being
loaded.

This will work if the drive isn't so big you can format to FAT32 rather than
NTFS, DOS doesn't know anything about NTFS.

If it's a big drive use what's provided as part of XP's install instead.

Note - you can still delete existing partitions using DOS and I do believe
even recreating them is ok. Just the formatting of a big drive exceeding
DOS's limits is a problem.

"rj" <rjnothere@netzero.net> wrote in message
news:ulZXW%23DJLHA.1868@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Windows XP won't boot. I tried reinstalling Windows but keep getting a
> blue
> screen even after deleting, recreating and formatting the C drive. I
> booted
> with an MSDOS floppy but can't access C drive. It may be a boot sector
> virus. How do I format the entire hard drive so I can do a clean install?
>
>
 
R

rj

Flightless Bird
Thank you all for your responses. DOS could not delete any partitions (I
tried all the delete options in FDISK) so I deleted them with BING and also
with the Win XP Setup CD. I error checked and formatted the entire hard
drive just in case it was a virus, also did fdisk /mbr even if it's
redundant. Win XP still won't install. There are too many error messages to
list. It won't copy many dl_ files etc. I tried the Ultimate Boot CD but it
won't do anything. So I'll take it to the shop to run diagnostics.

"rj" <rjnothere@netzero.net> wrote in message
news:ulZXW%23DJLHA.1868@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Windows XP won't boot. I tried reinstalling Windows but keep getting a
blue
> screen even after deleting, recreating and formatting the C drive. I
booted
> with an MSDOS floppy but can't access C drive. It may be a boot sector
> virus. How do I format the entire hard drive so I can do a clean install?
>
>
 
R

rj

Flightless Bird
Update - I had 2 blown capacitors on my mb, maybe due to lightning power
surge, hence I recycled my old computer and got a new one.

"rj" <rjnothere@netzero.net> wrote in message
news:ulZXW%23DJLHA.1868@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Windows XP won't boot. I tried reinstalling Windows but keep getting a
blue
> screen even after deleting, recreating and formatting the C drive. I
booted
> with an MSDOS floppy but can't access C drive. It may be a boot sector
> virus. How do I format the entire hard drive so I can do a clean install?
>
>
 
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