DescentBB

fdisk problems.

I am trying to wipe out a Compaq HD the has a Primary DOS partition and a Extended DOS partition.

I quess Compaq saves info for restore on the extended drive.

I have deleted both partitions gone into "Display partitions" and it says all is gone.

Then I restart go to fdisk, check "Display partitions" and the partitions are there again. I have wiped them out three or 4 times now.

Is there an order I must delete the partitions in? And even if there is, why do they show up again when they say there's no partitions?

Really confused

well as far as i know, there is only one order to delete the partitions with fdisk, it simply won't let u do it any otehr way....first go the logical drives, then the extended partition, then the primary partition.

I don't know why the partitions still show up, don't have much experiene with compaqs...all i can suggest is find out what hard drive that is, and do a low level format on it with the right manufacturer's software.

However, i wouldn't be surprised if compaq put some code in the bios that searches for these partitions on the hard drive, so if you do a low-level format on it and you erase these partitions, it might not even boot. Do some sort of backup, like an image of the hdd 1st.

Best thing would be to do some research 1st, and see if any1 lese had the same problem. I don't trust compaq, and i wouldn't be surprised if they did something dumb like this.

I'll check w/ Compaq.

I want to make one partition and format it and start from scratch so I quess low level format should be OK?

Put it into a different (non compaq) computer, image the bios partition, format the primary partition, put it back into the orignal computer.

thewolfe wrote:I'll check w/ Compaq.

I want to make one partition and format it and start from scratch so I quess low level format should be OK?

yep, sounds good.

Try this ...

Clear out the master boot record from the dos prompt by typing "fdisk/mbr".

Then go into "fdisk" and delete the partitions. Reboot and see if that did the trick.

Erm, isn't the BIOS on the second partition of a Compaq's hard drive? I don't think Fdisking that would be wise...

actually that was proven wrong in the other thread about compaqs.

Mr. Perfect wrote:Erm, isn't the BIOS on the second partition of a Compaq's hard drive? I don't think Fdisking that would be wise...

IBM was the company that did that for a long time. I think Compaq did it also, upto the pentium days.