FDisk-Format-Setup

[Terry]

I've been trying to reinstall Win98se on a computer where previously there
was a dual-boot XP and Win98se. My objective was/is to wipe the 40g hard
drive and reinstall 98se from scratch. I have all the CDs, product codes,
etc. My first problem came when Win98 setup gave me this message: "Caution:
Setup Detection Notice. Caution: SU0015. Setup detected a WinNT system
partition on your hard disk. Files on this partition will not be available
when you use Win98." I know they won't be available. I don't want them to be
available. I don't want the partition to exist. I sort of assumed that the
reinstallation would "take care of" any previous stuff on the hard drive.
Wrong, apparently, but I pressed on. I got 98se installed, but to my
considerable surprise, when I went to "My Computer" it showed that I had
only a 2g partition! The remaining 36g+ was apparently not allocated to
anything. So I did it all over again, figuring that I'd given the wrong
response somewhere along the line. Same result. Now I'm researching "fdisk"
and "format". I figured to wipe out everything with fdisk and that'd solve
my problem. Wrong again. I have read any number of web sites on the subject
of fdisk, and copied the instructions from Microsoft's KB 255867. Apparently
I cannot read plain English, because I cannot get fdisk to do what the
instructions say it should do. It will not delete the 2047m partition. When
I format the c:drive after doing fdisk, I still end up with a 2g partition
and 36g (or thereabouts) of apparently nothing. I know I have to be doing
something wrong, but I'd really love to find out what it is. I'd appreciate
any advice or assistance I can get. Thank you very much.

[Jeff Richards]

ZAP or WIPE at this site will clear the disk so that FDISK can create the
partitioning you want:
http://www.microstorage.com/Harddriveinfo.htm
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (DTS)
"Terry" > wrote in message
...
> I've been trying to reinstall Win98se on a computer where previously there
> was a dual-boot XP and Win98se. My objective was/is to wipe the 40g hard
> drive and reinstall 98se from scratch. I have all the CDs, product codes,
> etc. My first problem came when Win98 setup gave me this message:
> "Caution:
> Setup Detection Notice. Caution: SU0015. Setup detected a WinNT system
> partition on your hard disk. Files on this partition will not be available
> when you use Win98." I know they won't be available. I don't want them to
> be
> available. I don't want the partition to exist. I sort of assumed that the
> reinstallation would "take care of" any previous stuff on the hard drive.
> Wrong, apparently, but I pressed on. I got 98se installed, but to my
> considerable surprise, when I went to "My Computer" it showed that I had
> only a 2g partition! The remaining 36g+ was apparently not allocated to
> anything. So I did it all over again, figuring that I'd given the wrong
> response somewhere along the line. Same result. Now I'm researching
> "fdisk"
> and "format". I figured to wipe out everything with fdisk and that'd solve
> my problem. Wrong again. I have read any number of web sites on the
> subject
> of fdisk, and copied the instructions from Microsoft's KB 255867.
> Apparently
> I cannot read plain English, because I cannot get fdisk to do what the
> instructions say it should do. It will not delete the 2047m partition.
> When
> I format the c:drive after doing fdisk, I still end up with a 2g partition
> and 36g (or thereabouts) of apparently nothing. I know I have to be doing
> something wrong, but I'd really love to find out what it is. I'd
> appreciate
> any advice or assistance I can get. Thank you very much.
>
>
>
>

[Jake]

Hi,
Have you typed 'yes' when FDISK asked you if you want to use the 'large disk support' ?

KB 255867 "If your hard disk is larger than ...."

Good luck
--
Replies in the same thread please
Windows98 links to solutions
http://jake98.no-ip.info
Best Regards
Jake

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 23:56:18 -0700, "Terry" >

>I've been trying to reinstall Win98se on a computer where previously there
>was a dual-boot XP and Win98se. My objective was/is to wipe the 40g hard
>drive and reinstall 98se from scratch.

OK. You'd have to explicitly "wipe the 40G hard drive"; it would be a
Very Bad [TM] installer that did that automatically!

>My first problem came when Win98 setup gave me this message: "Caution:
>Setup Detection Notice. Caution: SU0015. Setup detected a WinNT system
>partition on your hard disk. Files on this partition will not be available
>when you use Win98." I know they won't be available. I don't want them to be
>available. I don't want the partition to exist.

Then it is up to you to destroy it.

>I sort of assumed that the reinstallation would "take care of" any
>previous stuff on the hard drive.

Why should it? An OS exists within a partition, and is expected to
respect other partitions that belong to other OSs. Maybe you want
everything wiped for one OS, but the installer cannot assume that;
what if you wished to install the OS into a multi-OS system and still
preserve the use of other installations already present?

>I got 98se installed, but when I went to "My Computer" it showed
>that I had only a 2g partition! The remaining 36g+ was apparently
>not allocated to anything.

Entirely correct, if the other 36G was in an NTFS volumes or
partitions that Win98 has no business tampering with. If you want to
free that space, you have to do so yourself. Looks like you didn't.

>Now I'm researching "fdisk" and "format". I figured to wipe out
>everything with fdisk and that'd solve my problem. Wrong again.

FDisk will let you delete a "Non-DOS" partition. But if there are
"non-DOS" volumes *within* an extended partition, it won't touch
those; perhaps that's what you are banging your head against :-)

Difficult situation, from a design perspective. Partitions are system
territory, but the inside of an extended partition is MS territory,
and only things recognisable to the MS OS you are working with are
expected to be there. The way these logical volumes link to each
other makes it difficult to remove an arbitrary logical volume in the
chain; it could break access to subsequent volumes.

NT and Win98 are both MS OSs, but perhaps Win98 doesn't "know" how to
deal with NT structures well enough for its FDisk to unpick an NTFS
volume out of a chain of logical volumes on an extended partition.

FDisk is a system-level tool for managing partitions (OS-agnostic
"system" territory), and also logical volumes within an extended
partition (MS-OS territory, and fuzzy for reasons I described).

Format is an OSlevel tool to initialize volumes for use within
partitions and volumes created by FDisk et al. It must not and will
not affect anything outside of the volume it's been let loose on!

What you need here is a more capable player in FDisk's territory, that
will let you nuke any NTFS volumes within the extended partition. If
I were you, I'd download Boot-It NG from www.bootitng.com and use that
as your partition tool on a one-off basis (for which it is free). I
would Cancel the installation to hard drive as boot manager, because
you don't need that; use it in partition maintenance mode only.



>-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -
Hmmm... what was the *other* idea?
>-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

[Terry]

"cquirke (MVP Win9x)" > wrote in message
...
> On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 23:56:18 -0700, "Terry" >

<<<snip>>>

> OK. You'd have to explicitly "wipe the 40G hard drive";

Perhaps "wipe" was a bad choice of words on my part, but it is essentially what I meant and what I
want to do: eliminate everything on the HD and start from "scratch," as it were. My question
remains: How do I do that? In your next comment, you say it's up to me to destroy it, but you
don't tell me how to do it. Not that it's your responsibility to tell me, but I was hoping
there'd be a relatively simple to follow set of instructions that someone could give me or point
me to.

> >My first problem came when Win98 setup gave me this message: "Caution:
> >Setup Detection Notice. Caution: SU0015. Setup detected a WinNT system
> >partition on your hard disk. Files on this partition will not be available
> >when you use Win98." I know they won't be available. I don't want them to be
> >available. I don't want the partition to exist.
>
> Then it is up to you to destroy it.
>
> >I sort of assumed that the reinstallation would "take care of" any
> >previous stuff on the hard drive.
>
<<<snip>>>

> >I got 98se installed, but when I went to "My Computer" it showed
> >that I had only a 2g partition! The remaining 36g+ was apparently
> >not allocated to anything.
>
> Entirely correct, if the other 36G was in an NTFS volumes or
> partitions that Win98 has no business tampering with. If you want to
> free that space, you have to do so yourself. Looks like you didn't.

See my previous comment/question: How do I do that?

<<<snip>>>


> FDisk will let you delete a "Non-DOS" partition. But if there are
> "non-DOS" volumes *within* an extended partition, it won't touch
> those; perhaps that's what you are banging your head against :-)

I suppose it's possible there's a "non-DOS" partition, but I have no idea. There seems to be a
"catch-22" in there somewhere.

> FDisk is a system-level tool for managing partitions (OS-agnostic
> "system" territory), and also logical volumes within an extended
> partition (MS-OS territory, and fuzzy for reasons I described).
>
> Format is an OS level tool to initialize volumes for use within
> partitions and volumes created by FDisk et al. It must not and will
> not affect anything outside of the volume it's been let loose on!

With OS level being subordinate to System-level, I presume?

> What you need here is a more capable player in FDisk's territory, that
> will let you nuke any NTFS volumes within the extended partition. If
> I were you, I'd download Boot-It NG from www.bootitng.com and use that
> as your partition tool on a one-off basis (for which it is free). I
> would Cancel the installation to hard drive as boot manager, because
> you don't need that; use it in partition maintenance mode only.
>
I may well go that route, but not quite yet. What do you mean by "one-off basis?" I've heard the
term maybe once or twice before and I have no idea what it means. I suppose it might well be
worth my while to get the free software you referred to, or even to buy the commercial version of
it. I have no real need of a "partition manager" because I don't intend to have more than one
partition per hard drive. Or maybe I mean NO partitions, I'm not sure. If I have one physical
drive and two logical drives, then is there one partition or two? I don't really want to get off
the subject, but it might be useful if I correctly understood what a partition is.

One last thing: I'm trying to learn, not to argue. Thank you for your patience.

[Terry]

Went there; did that; got rid of that pesky partition!

I went to BootItNG.com and read as much as I could, and then to a few other sites as well. I
still don't know the answer to some of my questions, but the problem is solved and I've learned at
least a couple of things. (I also learned a few things about how to (and not to) ask questions
here.)

Thank you for the help.

> What you need here is a more capable player in FDisk's territory, that will let you nuke any
NTFS volumes within the extended partition. If
> I were you, I'd download Boot-It NG from www.bootitng.com and use that as your partition tool on
a one-off basis (for which it is free). I
> would Cancel the installation to hard drive as boot manager, because you don't need that; use it
in partition maintenance mode only.
>
>

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

On Sat, 19 Jun 2004 12:39:33 -0700, "Terry" >
>"cquirke (MVP Win9x)" > wrote in message
>> On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 23:56:18 -0700, "Terry" >

>> OK. You'd have to explicitly "wipe the 40G hard drive";

>Perhaps "wipe" was a bad choice of words on my part, but it is essentially what I meant and what I
>want to do: eliminate everything on the HD and start from "scratch," as it were.

And that's what I mean; an OS tool has no business doing that, whereas
a system tool might. So FDisk as system tool does, and Format as OS
tool does not... where things get awkward is where unrecognised stuff
appears within OS territory, i.e. when FDisk encounters "unknown"
volume types within the OS's extended partition.

>In your next comment, you say it's up to me to destroy it, but you
>don't tell me how to do it.

Yes I do... eventually :-)

>I was hoping there'd be a relatively simple to follow set of instructions
>that someone could give me or point me to.

Safest is to use something like BING, as I suggested further on in
this post, but if you know what you're doing and have something like
DiskEdit, you can nuke things that way.

>> FDisk will let you delete a "Non-DOS" partition. But if there are
>> "non-DOS" volumes *within* an extended partition, it won't touch
>> those; perhaps that's what you are banging your head against :-)
>
>I suppose it's possible there's a "non-DOS" partition, but I have no
>idea. There seems to be a "catch-22" in there somewhere.

Yes, it's a catch-22, in that when FDisk looks inside its own
partitions, it is conservative when it finds what it doesn't
understand. It expects to see partitions it doesn't understand, and
will delete these, but when it sees unknown-type logical volumes
within an extended partition, it won't touch them.

>With OS level being subordinate to System-level, I presume?

Yep, that's the idea. Many OSs, one system to bind them :-)

>> If I were you, I'd download Boot-It NG from www.bootitng.com and use
>> as your partition tool on a one-off basis (for which it is free).

>I may well go that route, but not quite yet.

It's a small download, a great tool, and that's what I'd definitely
recommend for reasons beyond this situation (e.g. can handle larger
capacities, can align partitions and volumes so that later conversion
to NTFS doesn't land you with 512-byte clusters)

>What do you mean by "one-off basis?"

Well, once you've fixed up your partitioning, the job is done and you
don't need to keep it - thus you'd be in compliance with the "free for
evaluation" basis on which it's offered for free download.

>I have no real need of a "partition manager" because I don't intend
>to have more than one partition per hard drive.

There's good reason to use multiple volumes, even with one OS, and for
that purpose you don't need a boot manager even if you use BING to
create the primary (for booting and OS) and extended wiht logicals
(for data etc.). Only if you need to switch between multiple
*primary* partitions, as you might do for multiple OSs, do you need
something like BING to elegantly switch between them and possibly to
hide them from each other.

See http://cquirke.mvps.org for pages on that stuff.

>Or maybe I mean NO partitions, I'm not sure

No partitions either means a non-standard MBR that directly runs code
without respect to the partitioning standard, or an unused HD :-)

>If I have one physical drive and two logical drives, then is there
>one partition or two?

Typically you'd have a primary partition (C:) and an extended
partition containing one logical volume (D:). I usually use a primary
C: and an extended with three logicals D:, E: and F:

See http://cquirke.mvps.org/9x/partition.htm as to how I use these
terms, and http://cquirke.mvps.org/9x/dataman.htm on data management
strategies, starting with the role of partitioning in maintaining
performance and reducing data corruption risk.

>...but it might be useful if I correctly understood what a partition is.

http://cquirke.mvps.org/9x/partition.htm :-)

>One last thing: I'm trying to learn, not to argue.

Is fine, I'm reading you that way <g>


>--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -
Never turn your back on an installer program
>--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -

[Terry]

Once again -- thank you.