At 22:15 02-04-98 -0800, Douglas wrote:
>I was formatting a hard drive today with Partition Magic 3.0... I
>accidentilly chose the option to format using the HPST (or whatever)
>format... and it was too late to change by the time I realized my mistake
>(brain cramp) :(  HELP!  Now what can I do?  How do I get rid of the HPST
>format and replace it with FAT32?

Can you delete the partition with Partition Magic? Or convert the HPFS
partition to a FAT partition using Partition Magic? You may need to use
another computer to create a floppy based version of Partition Magic and
run that on the problem computer.

If this is the only partition on the drive (i.e., you don't mind losing all
partitions on this drive), you could run the debug routine (below) which
will completely overwrite track zero. You will need a bootable DOS diskette
with debug.exe on it. Also, if this is the only hard drive in the computer,
you want fdisk.exe, format.com, mscdex.exe, edit.com, autoexec.bat,
config.sys and DOS CD-ROM drivers on the diskette so that you can reinstall
your operating system.

Be sure to mind your spaces and capital letters:

debug<Enter>
-F 200 L200 0<Enter>
-a 100<Enter>
-mov ax,301<Enter>
-mov bx,200<Enter>
-mov cx,1<Enter>
-mov dx,0080<Enter> (change last 0 to 1 for drive D:, 2 for drive E:)
-int 13<Enter>
-int 3<Enter>
-<Enter>
-G=100<Enter>

** Notes:
1)  The letters in the first and last lines **must** be capitalized
letters, the rest should **not** be.
2)  In the line with the number 0080, change the last 0 to a 1 for
drive D:, as in 0081, and to a 2 for drive E:, etc.
3)  After the first couple of lines are typed and entered, you will
see numbers and memory addresses on the screen, don't worry, they are
supposed to show up.  The <Enter> on the line by itself after the
"int 3" line clears them everything back to the dash prompt so you can
type the last "go" command. (G=100)
4)  Do not run from a DOS Window out of Win95.

This is not my invention; I copied it from a message on the hardware-list.
It has helped several people with badly partitioned hard drives.

Regards,
Bill