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Cannot Partition [ONLY] Hard Drive


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Elrich2k3's Avatar
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Join Date: Apr 2008
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05-Apr-2008, 09:08 AM #1
Cannot Partition [ONLY] Hard Drive
So I have this Hard Drive, in my laptop. 160GB, partitioned off into a 50GB [C:] and a 60GB [D:] and apparently a hidden 10GB recovery partition. I managed to get a virus, and was not well defended.. so I decided to reformat. Which I had been meaning to do for a long time, so I could put XP on it...

So I boot the XP recovery console to format the drive, and discover that I don't have an administrator password. Apparently Vista doesn't have one by default, but I needed one to format the drive... so I reboot and try to go make one, and it doesn't work. I tried every possible way that I found on the internet to activate the administrator account on Vista to no avail. So I rebooted in Safe Mode and tried, believing the virus was behind this. But nothing I tried made the account active. So I did a low-level format with KillDisk... which is living up to its name.

I formatted C and D with KillDisk and then booted with a DOS CD [no floppy drive on the laptop] to run FDISK... and the drives weren't there. Only an unnamed 9994MB Non-DOS partition, which I suppose is the hidden 10GB recovery partition. So I try to make a new partition, and am told that there is no more space. I have a 160GB hard drive filled up with a [now useless] 10GB recovery partition, and 150GB of unformatted, unpartitionable space, it seems...
Help.

My ultimate goal is to have one large 160GB partition... that I can install XP to.. but FDISK only sees the recovery partition [which I am afraid to delete right now, as then FDISK may see nothing at all] ... I planned on tearing down that partition and making one large 160GB partition, formatting it for FAT32, then later formatting it for NTFS with the XP disc.... are there any boot discs with Linux or Windows [or DOS or BeOS or ANYTHING] with a utility I can use to make my hard drive usable again?
Frank4d's Avatar
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Join Date: Sep 2006
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Experience: Since MS-Dos 3.0
05-Apr-2008, 09:38 AM #2
Go to the hard drive manufacturers website and look at downloads for a "zero fill" (aka "low level format") utility.
DoubleHelix's Avatar
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05-Apr-2008, 10:10 AM #3
I don't think you need any more formatting utilities or tools. You have to boot from the Windows XP CD to make new partitions for install. DOS isn't going to recognize what is probably a SATA drive.
Elrich2k3's Avatar
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Join Date: Apr 2008
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05-Apr-2008, 06:10 PM #4
Haha... it seems that the Windows XP installer can indeed see the unpartitioned space ...
I meant to try that before I asked here, but I'd been up for about 26 hours.
Thanks Helix!
Shajahan's Avatar
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: India
Experience: Software Engineer
06-Apr-2008, 11:58 AM #5
Partition
Try Partition Magic (PQMagic)

It have a Dos version with Windows like GUI and mouse support.

Try that is my good friend.
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