Partition

[Nocashvalue]

Erm, hello chaps. Would anyone be able to give me a step-by-step easy-to-understand guide to getting rid of the partition on a NTFS computer?

[Pie R Squared]

Go to Start, Control Panel and then Administrative Tools (make sure youre using the Classic View in Control Panel)

Now go to Computer Management, Storage, Disk Management (Local)

This should bring up all of the drives and partitions.

Select the partition you want to delete, and right hand click on it.

Youll see the options in the box that pops up.

:)

[Nocashvalue]

:(
It would be bettter to explain the whole problem, wouldn't it.

Basically, my dad got this pc from work, and so when it boots up it tries to connect to his network. Which it can't do. So, I can only access the bios and stuff before windows boots up.

[wyrd_fish]

change the boot order to to CD first, then reinstall a new windows, it'll ask you to format or not.

[Pie R Squared]

Take out the hard drive and connect it upto the computer youre using right now, then follow the steps I mentioned above :)

[Nocashvalue]

=\ tried the boot order first, but it made no difference.

I plugged the Hard drive into this one, and it started to load fine. Great, I thought. It's working. But, when It got onto the win98 loading screen, it loaded half of it and the other half stayed black. Waited half an hour. Still the same. I don't think that one's gonna work.

I have a win98 boot disk, if that's any help. This one is running win98, and the problematic machine has two versions of NT on.

[Pie R Squared]

Don't allow the disk from the computer your trying to delete the partitions from boot on your machine, set the drive you usually boot off to boot first, then detect the other drive using the Administrator panel I mentioned before.

So:

Boot as normal (Partition 0, Primary IDE) and have the drive you want to repair/delete/ on Secondary IDE

When in Windows (as you are now) you should see the drive when opening My Computer.

If so, go to the Administration options in Control Panel and delete the partitions on the second disk.

If you cant do the above, do a Google for F-Disk and have a read up on it befor downloading it.

[l33t k1w1]

FDisk is on the Win98 startup disk you mentioned.

Use that and blow all the partitions away.

Work backwards, 3 then 2 then 1. It's really self explanatory.

[therhino]

You'll need to google to find the commands you need to destroy the partition with your start disk- it's possible to get totally lost without the relevant knowledge.

I've only used win98 startup disks to edit partitions on FAT16/32 hard drives, but I would have thought it should still work with NTFS.

[Nocashvalue]

Eep and feck. I know a lot less about computers than I thought I did. How the hell do I get it to "Boot as normal (Partition 0, Primary IDE) and have the drive you want to repair/delete/ on Secondary IDE" In the bios, I am completely lost.

[Pie R Squared]

The drive that you are using now is set correctly, leave it alone! :)
Your current drive is the Primary drive.
This enables it to boot Windows and for you to use it as it is now.

The second drive (the one you want to delete the partitions on) should have the jumper on the back of it set to Slave (might be labeled "SLV" on the jumper schematic on the back of the drive) and be connected to the second connector on the cable your Primary hard drive is connected to.

This drive doesn't need to be set to boot at all (as long as it is recognised during Power On Self Test (POST) your fine)

Now boot the computer as normal (as you did to get Windows up now)

Locate the devices connected to the computer using the above mentioned steps. :)

[Nocashvalue]

=\ How do I stop the secondary drive from booting?

[Pie R Squared]

The second drive won't boot if it is set as Slave and it's not configured in BIOS to be the boot drive.

[Nocashvalue]

Erm, it booted fine with the 2nd drive as slave, but the bastard won't show up in my computer.

[Pie R Squared]

You tried viewing the drives using the Admin options?

[Nocashvalue]

Nope :(
I really am useless.
How do I do it?

[l33t k1w1]

Go hunt down a copy of Partition Magic.

[Pie R Squared]

Partition Magic will be about as much use as tits on a nun if the drive isnt being detected.

The instructions to get to the admin panel are in my first post on the first page Nocashvalue :)

If that doesnt work, ensure that the drive is being detected by the BIOS (During POST when you start up the machine, it should display all the drives that it detects)

If not, then it's more BIOS jiggerybuggery for you!

[l33t k1w1]

Ah. Didn't RTFA properly.

Obvious things first - check all the connections are snug and that either the cables or plugs aren't damaged.

If it still doesn't pick up, then remove the drive, head to Google, type in the brand and model number and look for the jumper settings. While the majority should be Master|Slave|Cable Select, some are more picky in where they are aligned.

[Nocashvalue]

*bumpity*
Well, it wouldn't detect it no matter what I did, so I got my dad to ask the techies at his work. Apparently I need to make a win98 boot disk, boot it from that, and then I can get rid of it all somehow. well, I made the boot disk, booted the PC from it, and I have no idea what to do now. It has the little input thingy, and so I typed help, and picked out some things that looked remotley helpful. FDISK /STATUS doesn't do much, and neither does /fORMAT C: /s
Help!

[Digga]

do you need any of the data on the disk? if not then i suggest getting a dos prompt by a boot disk or something, and have a floppy disk with a utilityt such as fdisk on it. Delete the current partition, create a new one, and then in dos just type "format d:" or whatever the drivename is, and it'll leave it as good as new. It is also possible however that the disk is, to but it bluntly, buggered, which is why the data on it is corrupt and you have having trouble with it. if it's too much trouble and it's under warrenty just send it back to the manufacturers and get it replaced.

[Nocashvalue]

Right, new problem. I need to know how to create an MS-DOS partition on the hard drive, because fdisk won't format it because it's NTFS, and I want to format it blank and install win98.

[l33t k1w1]

You have to delete the NTFS partition using FDISK and make a FAT32 partition.

This was covered at the beginning of the thread and we're going around in circles.

[Nocashvalue]

When I try and use Fdisk, it comes up with the error: "No fixed disks present" =\