KWSN Orbiting Fortress

mohrorless · Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2006 11:38 pm Post subject: %$@^#*#* Dell.

Here I am trying to blow out my hard drive to reinstall everything and it is going through the process, saying it is formatting the hard drive, then it says is installing Windoze (TM). When it is done my machine is exactly is how it was BEFORE I even started!!!!

WTF?!?!?!?!?!? IT FORMATTED THE DRIVE!!!!!! I SAW IT SAY IT WAS DOING IT!!!!! I set it to blow out the partition!

I'm right back where I was when I started. UGH! Mad

_________________
Fetch me the Holy Hand Grenade!

#Usa

Keeper of the Unending keg of PGGBs
Taunter in Training
Campaign Manager for Sir Shrubbery

Plus

Fart in your gen direxion · Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 12:32 am Post subject:

Next time try it while sober Confused

.

KWSN - Sir Brian C....... · Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 5:32 am Post subject:

or fdisk the thing first...... Wink

_________________
Oh, it's blessed are the meek!, Well I'm glad they'll get something as they have a hell of a time!

mohrorless · Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 9:04 am Post subject:

Sir Papa Smurph · Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 3:37 pm Post subject:

use administrative tools in control panel to delete partition.

Disk management
_________________
a.k.a. Licentious of Borg.........Resistance Really is Futile.......
and a Really Hoopy Frood who always knows where his Towel is...

Tenebra · Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:16 pm Post subject:

mohrorless · Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 6:25 am Post subject:

Update......

Well I got the copy of Partition Magic & let her work her evil ways. I then installed xp pro on the machine.

All went smooth.....until I went to reboot. Then I started getting

Tenebra · Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 7:14 am Post subject:

That is why I never buy any Dell or IBM or stuff like that machines. Because they are problematic to say the least and never have the specifications I ask for.
I select every piece in my PC myself, and the machine I am currently at home, I have assembled it. Bought the pieces and put it together.
Since I have my own company I do the same there, with the exception of the server which is different.
_________________

My Greek Blog: The Dark Side of the Force and Other Stories
My English Blog: Snippets and Other Stories from the Net

rotciv KOTHRT · Prince Joined: 20 Feb 2006 Posts: 1482 Location: USA

I had one DELL and I have an HP notebook (wife and I use it for email when camping.)
Everthing else are all custom built by me. AMD 400,450,475,2- 1800, 2600 and my game rig AMD3000 (still at home wife's 1800 w 1g ram, my 2, 2600 w/1g ram 6600 BFG GTOC, 3000 w/ 1G ram 7600 BFG.
#ni-1

_________________
Sir Rotvic Knight of the Halfround Table
MAD, MAD I tell you.They're all MAD.
I am the only sane one here, my Doctor told me I was cured after the shock treatments. Big Brother Is Aways Watching.

mohrorless · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:13 am Post subject:

Update!!!!

The Dell is still DOA. I wasn't able to borrow the neighbor's machine (they went away for a few days). Crying or Very sad

So now I am at work - where I CAN create the boot disk. Hopefully it will work when I get home.
_________________
Fetch me the Holy Hand Grenade!

#Usa

Keeper of the Unending keg of PGGBs
Taunter in Training
Campaign Manager for Sir Shrubbery

Plus

jbyram2 · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 8:07 am Post subject:

Apply a 10d nailgun to that disk, and start over.
_________________
0.0 Giggly hertzes Folding!
Go Diskless..Pure computing elegance, no frills

The brain I'm wearing makes me eat chocolate and cry!!
Something Completely different

Cohiba · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 8:51 am Post subject:

You could be like me and got WTF a boot disk the damn thing doesn't even have a floppy drive..

I do have a nice bootable XPsp2 CDROm for emergancies.. Could throw the ISO someplace if you want to dl it. It loads bartpe but the core is basically XPSP2 and a cool gui to run tools.

On a side note Never had a problem with Dell's reinstall cd's infact i've used it a few times on Non Dell's and its worked good. Wink

My recomendation is to nuke the sucker, grab an old MS dos boot disk fdisk the sucker nuke all partitions let the dell cd install the way it wants and reboot a few times to make sure it works then repartition it. My guess is something got lost during partition magic doing some last minute tweaking.

Also make sure your c:\boot.ini file is correct, if that is not correct it will never find ntldr and complain
_________________
Smoke-em if you got-em I do..

mohrorless · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 10:24 am Post subject:

If the boot disk doesn't work & the "rescue disks" I made from partition magic this morning don't do it either, there is a guy here at work that is a wizard at this type of thing. So it will be back up tonight or it is going for a ride tomorrow.
_________________
Fetch me the Holy Hand Grenade!

#Usa

Keeper of the Unending keg of PGGBs
Taunter in Training
Campaign Manager for Sir Shrubbery

Plus

KWSN - Sir Brian C....... · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 10:40 am Post subject:

Hold on a mo.....

have you checked the boot sequence order in the BIOS..? Idea

it should be

Floppy
CD-ROM/DVD
HDD

otherwise the pc will still try to boot from the HDD even if its knackered/unbootable...

#ni-1

_________________
Oh, it's blessed are the meek!, Well I'm glad they'll get something as they have a hell of a time!

mohrorless · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 11:26 am Post subject:

KWSN - Sir Brian C....... · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 12:06 pm Post subject:

one issue I had recently with boot sequences was that the DVD drive came through as an extra IDE device, rather than CDROM, so if you selected the CDROM it wouldn't boot but when you specifically selected the DVD drive it worked. The problem was the the DVD was at the bottom of the list and so was not visible, you had to scroll down..... Twisted Evil

have you tried booting the CD in another PC?, or swapping out the CDrive itself with another one...

#ni-1

_________________
Oh, it's blessed are the meek!, Well I'm glad they'll get something as they have a hell of a time!

mohrorless · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 12:10 pm Post subject:

It was a floppy that I was getting problems with. The Dell "Reinstall Everything" disk I have isn't giving me problems. It boots from that no problem.

The actual error I am getting now is "NTLDR is missing". I found a fix BUT it will only run in Windows, so I needed to get a windows boot disk running right.
_________________
Fetch me the Holy Hand Grenade!

#Usa

Keeper of the Unending keg of PGGBs
Taunter in Training
Campaign Manager for Sir Shrubbery

Plus

mohrorless · Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 4:12 pm Post subject:

UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's back (mostly).........

The home workhorse is back up and running. There were a number of other issues (if you want to hear them, say so here) but she is back up and running (and shrubbing!) again.
_________________
Fetch me the Holy Hand Grenade!

#Usa

Keeper of the Unending keg of PGGBs
Taunter in Training
Campaign Manager for Sir Shrubbery

Plus

alpha_fruit · Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 6:25 pm Post subject:

Yeah, Sir John. #ni-1

_________________
Don't fuss about growing older, many are denied the chance.

Sir Papa Smurph · Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 7:35 pm Post subject: