In my repairs, I have occasionally had a drive with unknown partions that
would give me a problem. We would use a program from Gateway called GWScan
to write 0's and1's to the hard drive, then start over as if it were a new
empty drive.

GWScan -
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?param=gwscan&st=kw

This will create a bootable floppy with the program on it. Just boot the
machine with the floppy and select write 1's and 0's to drive. It is a slow
process on a large drive, but has always worked for me unless the drive had
bad sectors.

Fran


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian C>" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 10:37 PM
Subject: Re: Partition Woes


> Bob,  I 'd already removed & recreated partitions w/ p'magic (ver 8)
> leaving 12MB blank , and was unable to successfully re-install OS.  Also
> tried HP's HD utility, which reported no errors.  Was unable to get
> ahold of HP's recovery disc, so it looks like "low-level" format is in
> order.
>
> Tony Mayer, the /mbr switch was one of the first things I tried, to no
> avail.
>
> Thanks for the responses guys.
>
> Ian Carmichael
>
>
> > At 11:57 PM 8/31/2003, Ian Carmichael wrote:
> >
> >> Hello all.  I have an HP laptop here that although had only Win98
> >> installed,  also had an unknown boot manager (based upon info supplied
> >> by owner).  Partition type reads as UNKNOWN .........
> >
>
>
> > Bob Wright wrote:
> > Since you have Partition Magic, the first thing to do is remove all
> > partitions
> > so the drive is totally empty.  Now, using Partition Magic, create a
> > primary
> > partition, Fat32 that is 98% of the available drive.......
> >
> > If you cannot accomplish this with Partition Magic,......
> > Go to the manufacturer's web site and find their low-level format
> > utility....
> >
>


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                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>