PC bolloxed - it just got worse

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guitarman

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Ok, it's really f'cked........

After failing miserably to reload Windows yet again I thought I'd reformat C as originally suggested by Fanum.

Would u f'cking believe it.... it won't format the drive. A full format appears to be working then fails with "Windows was unable to format the drive". A quick format displays that message straight away.

I can't boot into safe mode as I get a message saying something about "A valid XP system was not found".

The message I get on the blue screen of death was "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL which appears to have something to do with the nic (from what I read) but I can't even get into the network setup wizard and the PC hangs if I try to use the "connections" tab in the system information window.......

Apart from throwing the fecker out the window and claiming for a new one on insurance any other ideas????

Cheers

Dick
 
If you are tying to format Windows from within windows, then it will not work.

You need to boot from the windows xp cd and delete the partition then re install .
 
cyclops said:
If you are tying to format Windows from within windows, then it will not work.

You need to boot from the windows xp cd and delete the partition then re install .
Click to expand...


like he said - boot from either CD, Floppy or removable storage i.e Flash drive

you will need a boot disk/image that supports your CD/DVD.

Better still use your original Windows install CD.
 
Detox said:
like he said - boot from either CD, Floppy or removable storage i.e Flash drive

you will need a boot disk/image that supports your CD/DVD.

Better still use your original Windows install CD.
Click to expand...

I only have a "rescue" disk from Mesh and afaics it reloads windows rather than boots from the disk.

Tried booting from the Norton Ghost CD and although I managed to bring up windows explorer it didn't do anything when I tried to format the disk......no message, no format, no nothing.

Cheers

Dick
 
You have a corrupt or faulty network card driver. Try removing the network card and rebooting, just in case windows ignores the driver if the card isn't found and boots normally.

If all else fails, you may need to use a disk utility loaded into memory like Fdisk.com and format.com along with a command interpreter like command.com to delete the primary disk partition then build a new partition, format it, and reinstall windows onto a bare drive. It also depends if you have used FAT32 or NTFS as your file system as to which utilities will work, as not all variants can work with NTFS based systems.

Like the man said, you cannot format a windows based disk from within windows itself.
 
i dare say the network card is not a card at all & is actually part of the motherboard, so cannot be physically removed.

you can boot from your partition magic cd to format the C partition if necessary.

do you know how to boot from cd? is that what you've been doing? i'm a bit confused here myself.
 
Right, what I've done is to press F8 once to get a list of drives I can boot from. I then booted from the recovery disk but it went through a set of screens to set up windows but I didn't get an option to reformat or repartition anything.

Did the same with Norton Ghost but although there are a number of utility options I couldn't find anything to repartition the disk and running windows explorer under the Norton system didn't allow me to reformat.

If it is a dodgy driver can't I just download a new one??

Off to see if there is a separate card.

Cheers

Dick
 
guitarman said:
Right, what I've done is to press F8 once to get a list of drives I can boot from. I then booted from the recovery disk but it went through a set of screens to set up windows but I didn't get an option to reformat or repartition anything.
Click to expand...

did you go into the install windows options? IIRC it asks you about partioning & formatting after you've told it to install windows.
 
Don't remember an option like that but I'm about to try it again using the Partition Magic CD as suggested.........

I'm going off line I may be gone for some time :D :eek:

Cheers

Dick
 
cookie said:
i dare say the network card is not a card at all & is actually part of the motherboard, so cannot be physically removed.

you can boot from your partition magic cd to format the C partition if necessary.

do you know how to boot from cd? is that what you've been doing? i'm a bit confused here myself.
Click to expand...

Yep, network adapter is integrated so no chance of removing it but I did disable it and blimey everything's working again :) - except no internet. Removed the existing drivers and reloaded them from the motherboard installation CD.

Got the adapter re-enabled and blimey, everything's stopped working........ :(

Called Mesh who now think it's a port fault (nice bit of rhyming there). Unfortunately it will be a few days before an engineer gets here so a standalone adapter seems the easiest option.

Watch this space....

Cheers

Dick
 
Feck me it's fixed :D

Disabled the network adapter and bought a USB network adapter. 5 minutes installation. F'cking weeks of pissing about and it's a f'cking hardware problem that no diagnostics diagonsed. Bollox.......

Thanks for everone's suggestions.

Cheers

Dick
 
Nippy Normans supply Touratech, Wunderlich, Desert Fox and many other makes of accessories.
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