Setting up Hard Drive - help!

[jentle]

I am currently in the process of reformatting my hard drive. I am at the point where I can boot up from the system disk but when I try to copy to drive c: the computer won't recognize the drive. I have tried sys c:, diskcopy, etc but it keeps telling me invalid drive. I can't even switch to drive c to view contents, etc.....how do I fix this so I can get my computer up and running again?

[eyesee]

its either:
A. Not set up correctly in the system BIOS
B. Not fdisked (no partition)
C. Not formatted
D. All of the above

[jentle]

tried to reformat from a> format c:
tried format c: /s
keep getting Bad Command or File Name
tried to log onto c: by typing c:\
get error message invalid drive specification

[Eeyore]

Hi!
If you are getting "Bad Command" when you type FORMAT, the file must not be on the floppy drive. Type:
dir a:\format.*

If you have gotten that error evertime you tried to format, that is the problem. If you are installing a version of DOS, the first disk of the set will have the commands on it. If you don't have DOS installation Disks try these:
DOS 6.22 from 400DNS (http://www.angelfire.com/or/jondowd/dos622.html)
or
Freeservers Com (http://www.angelfire.com/or/jondowd/dos622.html).

Let us know if that works.
Dennis

[1]

Here we go again... http://discussions.virtualdr.com/biggrin.gif
http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/Forum6/HTML/004021.html

The easiest way to change directory to c:\ is "c:", not "c:\" (depends on OS though, but using something like Win NT, there would have been a difference in interpretation.)
If you can't get to c:\, there are three possibilities:

1. The HD isn't connected properly/set up in the BIOS.
2. It hasn't been partitioned with fdisk.
3. Both 1 & 2

Assuming you don't have any access to c:\ , check if it is detected in the BIOS. You can enter the BIOS by pressing either delete/F1/F10 when the pc is booting up. You'll most likely see a message like "Press * to enter setup", where * is the key you need to press. If you don't see the HD (it should be primary master), hopefully you'll have a option to autodetect HDs.

Next, see if you can access the HD. If you can't, run fdisk to partition it. Let us know if you need further instructions on how this is done.

If you can get to c:\ , but doing a dir results in an error message, format c:

[This message has been edited by 1 (edited 02-18-2000).]

[KiDWiZ]

boot from the boor floppy and then type format c: /s