Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 14:45:37 -0000 From: "Chris Hogan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: OT: Help with disk setup on a Toshiba laptop
Hi all, This isn't a libretto question but I know the knowledge on this list about hard disks and operating systems is second to none so I'd be grateful if anyone could help on this. I have an old Toshiba T2150 (Pentium I think, 20MB Ram, 800Mb HD) which I've been using to play with a variety of different operating systems over the years, various flavours of Linux and BSD mostly. But I now want to get rid of it through my local freecycle group so I thought I'd put Win95 back on it, I don't like the idea of putting things on freecycle that are unusable. But although I can fdisk and format the hard drive and get it running under DOS, Win95 setup fails with the following message: Setup found a compressed volume or disk-cache utility on your computer. Quit setup and .... blah... If I force it to go further, it unpacks the initial setup files then fails with error SU-0013 which is basically saying that it can't find an MS-Dos partition to use. I have tried using various different combinations of DOS to fdisk and format the HD, from Dos 5.0 to Win98SE, including a Win95 boot floppy, all to no avail. I've also tried fdisk /MBR with each version, no change. I have booted it with the most basic dos configuration, i.e. no config.sys or autoexec.bat at all and setup files on the hard disk so there's no CD drivers in memory (actually the CD drive's broken now anyway ....) I've tried the boot disks on the Toshiba site (I never had the original disks) and although they boot up, they only have basic Dos with CD drivers and tools to restore from CD (which I don't have and the drive is now broken... etc etc). There's no fdisk/format on them and if I boot from them and then use the fdisk/format programs from another Dos version then they won't run (because they say 'incorrect Dos version'). I have also used a disk utility to zero the contents of the hard drive, then fdisk/format, but again, no change. So I am forced to conclude that the problem isn't to do with anything that's being loaded into memory at startup, and isn't anything wrong with the one primary DOS partition I'm creating (FAT32, btw). That leaves either a hardware fault (unlikely, I feel) or something in the boot sector (or other area on the disk) that Windows 95 setup doesn't understand, and it's making it think the hard disk isn't partitioned correctly. Not surprising since it's had all sorts of boot loaders and enablers on it over the years. I have two questions: 1: Would the disk zeroing program (Maxtor Maxblast, if anyone's interested) include the boot sector, or in it's zeroing? 2: What the *@"!%£* can I try next!! I have to admit that although I muck around with PC's a lot, the boot sector is one area where my knowledge is limited. Any thoughts gratefully welcomed. Chris
