James,
You could try the command fdisk /mbr to clear up a fat issue, if you didn't
have any dual boot setups or other windows XP / windows 2000 wrinkles on the
drive.  You need a bootable diskette.  You can disable the ramdrive by
renaming the config.sys and autoexec.bat files on the diskette you have.
You need config.sys for formatting because device=himem.sys must be in it,
but you don't need it for fdisk.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:
80/support/kb/articles/Q69/0/13.ASP&NoWebContent=1


If all you want or need is to access the drive again, Microsoft provides a
utility for cleaning up a drive.  It is widely available on the web if you
do a google search for delpart.exe
Here is a link to download.  You need a bootable diskette again, without
config.sys and autoexec.bat.  After using delpart.exe fdisk will work.  None
of the data on the drive will be recoverable without the use of sophistcated
tools, but the drive will be functional, assuming it has no physical damage.

If you need data that is on the drive, and fdisk mbr didn't help, there are
tools for inspecting the data areas of the drive and rebuilding the FAT from
what is found there.  Ask again specifically about this and you should get
some suggestions from people who have used them.

http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm

Tom Turak

-----Original Message-----
From: James Aaserud [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 2:38 PM

If I have a Hard drive that I can't access because I've some how lost the
FAT is there a way to at least re-write it. I've tried Fdisk but it comes
back with the error 'no fixed disk present' I've tried booting to floppy but
the boot disk assigns C as the ramdrive. Invalid media type message is the
closest to the drive as I can get. Is this drive a paper weight now?

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