very strange problem

Hey all, I was getting ready to do a complete format andwanted to be sure i had everything formated so before i reboted with the restore CD i popped into a DOS prompt and did fdisk/MBR, it said for some reasonit hadnt been doneand i was like ok ill do it later or whatever, i put in the restore CD and shut down for a few minutes as i had done a million times before, smoked a ciggarette and when i came back i turned the computer on and it started the restore program and then it stopped and said it couldnt find my HD, i was like ok its done this before when i was formatting from an NTFS OS and i was like ok last time i fixed it by using a regular Windows 98 SE CD and so i booted with that, it also said it couldnt find my Hard Drive and so i tried Windows 2,000 pro and the same thing happened, so i sat for a second thinking and tthought, ok ill try linux, so i popped in the suse linux 8.1 professional DVD and installed it no probs (thats how im online right now, but im still curiouse as to what that may have been, any help at all id apprecikte, i should be on more tommorow because the service tech is comin here tommorow to check on everything and make sure everything is working ok, so i hope to see you all tommorow and thanks in advance if anyone can help me :)

Gore: Sounds to me like after the install, it couldn't find the MBR.

Sometimes lilo really messes up your MBR and it won't be fixed on install.

I take it your BIOS still found it... as you were able to load *nix on it.

Def. sounds like your MBR wasn't written to in a format that m$ could understand.

You have to do the fdisk /MBR AFTER you do your install.
Lilo is stubborn... doesn't want to give it up...

Oh, did you by any chance try to boot with a m$ boot disk? If so, was it sucessful?
If it was sucessful... it def. was your MBR.

Mabye you had the syntax wrong?

EDIT: Were you installing to your primary partition, or do you only have one partition on there? Your MBR is the FIRST thing that goes on your HD. It has to be with the first however many sectors (1024?) on the HD, or the system won't be able to read it.

theres only one HD in this computer and it was just odd because i had formatted twice yesterday and it was no problem, and i had the syntax of the command ok and everything, i checked it twice to be sure, tommorow after i get my Modem and everything fixed ill try again, then again ill prolly try aftter a lil bit, after i had rebooted when the CD wouldnt work, (i can boot from CD) it said no OS or somethin like that but hopefully thats been overwritten now that Linux is installed, all i have on here right now is suse and its working absolutly fine so im kinda happy about that, it formatted it (in FDISK it said the partition was unknown, i hve no idea why it sid that when it was Windows 98 SE unless it was something to do with when i did chkdsk \f even though it said it didnt do anything.

Hi

I've had this problem many times. I use a dos boot disk, then on command prompt i type in

fdisk /mbr

then i delete the non-dos partition (which is the one that linux used to reside on) then i add new partitions (depending on how i want them to be).

After that a windows install cd when installing will format the partition normally and install.

Or......

hmmm, suse 8.1 does not have yast 1...anyways, try booting with the suse cd and see if you can just edit your partitions from there. That def. works.

Good luck and message me if i can be of more help to you :)

Hey all, Thanks much for tryin to help me out, i tried while booted in Windows the chkdsk /f and it said it couldnt for some reason, so i did fdisk/mbr and that said it couldnt for some reason, so im like ok, i stuck in the restore CD, shut down, smoked, turned the computer on and it said it couldnt find my HD, this happened once before when i was using Windows 2,000 pro, so i remembered that last time a regular Windows 98 CD fixed it and formatted it, so i tried that, no luck, tried the partition magic, no luck (said the partition was bad) tried Norton Anti Virus CD (bootable) and floppies,knothing, booted from Suse Linux install, worked fine, after i got Linux on i tried again, and again, nothing, so now i just have Suse Linux 8.1 Professional on here, and im going to have to instead of getting a laptop i wanted, buy a new desktop, they have a nice VPR matrix Desktop for about a thousand dollars at best buy so im gunna save up and get that and have that as a Windows Machine, i duno man i kinda like this hole install without a reboot thingy, but i do miss video that isnt choppy and having sound, (found the sound card but i cant member what kind i have so cant configure) anyway a big thanks to everyone for tryin to hellp me out in my time of need, i appreaciate it:)

gore,

Personally, everytime i want to format (rapair clusters, partitions, etc.) i use my hard disk manufacturer's tool. Just look at your HD model and look for this tool in the manufacturer's website. These kind of tools are the most compatible and are exclusivelly created to your HD model, so you shouldn't have problems to bring you HD back to its factory condition, besides there's an option to do this in this kind of tools. It could take you some time to find this tool but is worth the try.

Good luck!!!

DKRR