Topic: Help with re-formatting

[Sandra]

I would think that if the drive has been able to run through the Zero Fill prog then the drive is able to have all sectors written to.
So that would lead me to think that the ME Cd is damaged and is not being read properly, rather than a faulty hard drive  

[measter]

the cd drives lens could be dirty too

[john313]

ive double cheked all the minor things such as cd lenses, and i have downloaded all of the proggrammes that you guys have reccomended, so i will check it out tonight and see how i get on.

[Simon]

How old is the CD-Rom drive?  Maybe it on it's way out?  Have you got another drive you could try loading from?

[john313]

both my cd and dvd drives are new, although i have only tried it in the dvd drive as this is the one that the computer auto selects as my designated drive.

[Dack]

Few things worth considering:

1. When you are trying to put ME on a disc - how big is the disc drive and what size partition have you set it to? One version of FDISK is limited to 64G http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q263044 - the replacement is only good for upto 137G.

2. Length of cable to DVD/CD drive. If too long then all sorts of wierd things happen (had a similar problem about a year ago where the 'extra long' IDE cable I was using caused it to hang during installation.

3. Bios set for boot sector protection - this would not allow you to do the install.

[Sandra]

3. Bios set for boot sector protection - this would not allow you to do the install.

Thats a good point Dack, as most people disable it but if they have loaded failsafe defaults at some point then it may default to enabled without you realising its done that.
Do you happen to know at which point it would halt the install process ?

[john313]

Hi again everyone, thanks to everyones help i have now managed to get everything up and running (and back on to spankers weekly).  Im no expert, but after i ran the maxtor zero fill programme the setup process continued all the way through, so i think that had something to do with it.  the only 2 probs i have now is that my comp seems to be running a little slow (not a problem as i have just bought more ram to put in), and the second is weather to keep M.E. or go to X.P. but that argument may go on forever!!
Thanks again for all your help, it really has been greatly appreciated!!!!!!!!

[Clive]

Well John, as an ex user of Me myself, I would urge you to upgrade to XP as there is absolutely no comparison between the two operating systems.  Unlike Me, XP is stable and those daily crashes which you now experience will be a thing of the past.  However, if you do decide to upgrade, it is essential that you immediately download all the service packs and patches from Windows Update in chronological order.  Best advice is to download them one at a time and reboot as required.  Some of my fellow forummers may think that I'm being slightly overcautious with that advice, but I know that some people have experienced problems by downloading the lot in one go.

I'm sure one of the techies will offer advice on the speed problem.

[Simon]

It would also be advisable to download the MS Blaster Worm patch for XP, and keep it on a floppy disc, so that you can install it as soon as you have installed XP, before going online to get the rest of the updates.  Otherwise, you will risk getting the worm, before you can download the patch for it.

You can download the MS Blaster Worm patch from here.

[Reno]

well i know this is after the fact but next time take a drive of the same size and ghost it over the problem drive your having to format. It will write over any data problem you might have and it will sure as hell take less time than rewriting the disk zero by zero.

Also fdisk should have solved the old data problem. Always keep a win98 boot disk or cd handy.

Ive about decided XP is the lazy pc users os. With most popular hardware drivers included it almost takes all the fun out of looking for drivers. It doesn't crash (often) and its fairly user friendly. If i wasn't curious about software and stuff that could electrocute me this would be my main os.