recover after fdisk

[awrobinsonii]

>:(
Okay here is the problem!! SPAMMy buddy asked me to assist in getting his Compaq Armada 4120 Laptop up and running. SPAMWell it was running somewhat okay before I got my hands on it. SPAMI am in the process of getting A+ cert still waiting on the book. SPAMBut anyway, the problems he found were that some keys are inoperable ( so we hooked a regular keyboard up and it works will soon purchase a replacement keyboard ), floppy inoperable ( got one on the way, gotta love ebay ), and when he is running Microsoft Word on windows 95 he gets a error message. So my plan was to find all the problems I could and fix what I could from what experience I have accumlated over the past 3 years of trial and error. SPAMWell in the process of trying to reformat his hdd problems were uncovered "bad allocation units, maybe about 3". SPAMSo my plan was to try to partition his hdd around the bad units but the partition program I have doesn't state anything about allocation units so I would have not known where to start and stop the partition. SPAMAnyway, I "FDISK" it. SPAMWHOOOOOOPPPPS! Well now when I boot the laptop I get the message "missing operating system" okay so I place a universal boot disk in and okay great I have some life in there. SPAMIt runs and gives me the basic three options, run setup, w/, or wo cd support. It sure would be great if my cdrom wasn't a PCMCIA slot user. Oh well so I go with boot wo/ cdrom support and I get "a:/". SPAMI tried to run the partition prog. but it didn't work. Man I really screwed up. Can anyone help or should I just have him buy a new hdd? SPAMAre bad allocation units repairable or can they be isolated within a partition area? Anything please.

[conquering1]

o.k. first thing, you don't need to buy a new hard disk. But you do need to reload the o.s. you lost everything when you deleted the partition with fdisk.Before you can do anything you need to create a new partition
since you deleted the old. You can use fdisk again or maybe find a trial version of powerquest partion magic somewhere.
In any case, boot back to a:\ from your boot disk and go to fdisk. type Y to enable large disk support. Create a primary partion. Make just under the maxium size of the disk. Leave about 10mb free space. after this you need to reboot back to
a:\ again with your boot disk and type format c: \u. when this is finished reboot again with your bootdisk and choose with cdrom support. you should be able to reload the operating system now. Next time you run into bad allocation units or other disk or partition errors try using a third party program like partition magic to fix these for you.

[awrobinsonii]

???
Hey Conquer thanks for the reply, I don't know what I did to that hdd but I tried to follow your instructions but now my computer won't even acknowledge the hdd exist it won't change directories when I try to change from A: to C: it just won't let me do it, and it doesn't help that I corrupted my original universal boot disk and being in Okinawa, japan I couldn't find anyone that would let me borrow theirs but this one Japanese computer store but the font is in japanese and well I don't speak or read it so the boot disk is of no use to me so what ever the error message comes up when I try to change directories to C: I can't read it. I might just buy a new or used hdd for this laptop. Might just be the easier route to go. SPAMThanks anyway.

[Hulaboy]

If you're looking for a boot disk, you can always go to Bootdisk.com (http://www.bootdisk.com). SPAMThey have downloadable bootdisks on the site for pretty much a good portion of the OSes out there.

[shovel204]

Until the hard drive is formatted the pc wont see it if you try changing to it from the dos prompt.As long as the BIOS sees it it is ok.Just foolow the instructions from conquering1 boot with the boot disk and run the fdisk set the partitions then either make the partition active (option2) and then after the mandatory reboot with the boot disk in the drive at the a:\ prompt type in your format C: /u (or /s)

[awrobinsonii]

:)
Thank you for your replies to my query. SPAMWhat I finally had to do was after running format it made it 50% and would not go any further, therefore running into the bad allocation units. SPAMSo in fdisk I partition a little less than half of the hdd (the good half) the first say 45% and it formatted it just fine, I was able to run Windows 98 on it and the computer is up and running. SPAMTHis is only a temp fix until I am able to find a replacment hdd for this Compaq Armada 4120(the hdd was only 1gb, so no big loss. Thanks again for your input, but just so everyone who comes to this post knows I found a temporary remedy. SPAMI was still unable to a program or fix for bad allocation units if anyone can direct me to something like that it would be great.

[wizbones]

You can more than like save the whole drive if you follow the direction for the post Bad Allocation Units in this forum.

Did feel like cutting and pasting so the directions are there and they should bring the whole drive back to life.

Do you know what the biggest room in the world is?

The room for improvement SPAM8)