Wierd problem with partitioning

[cgkanchi]

Ok, here's the problem. My friend's Red Hat 7.2 installation suddenly begins getting kernel panics. Thinking that maybe her brother messed about with Linux and screwed it up somehow. So I start the installation planning to delete all the partitions (yes, even the windows one) and do a clean install. It gets upto the point where it lets me choose between DiskDruid and FDISK and no matter which one I choose, it tells me that it could not read the MBR and it has to initialize the disk. I say what the heck and tell it to go ahead. That's when it gives me an error saying that it could not find any valid devices to make a partition on and it promptly reboots. After that I've tried a lot of things to get this baby running including using ranish to do the partitioning. And everytime i just get the same error. The wierd thing is that when I make a Fat32 parition using Ranish or DOS FDISK, the partitions are read by My friend's system is now blank and has nothing on it except a Fat32 partition that spans the entire disk (20 gigs). I've never come across a problem even similar to this and any ideas would be appreciated.
Cheers,
cgkanchi

[roswell1329]

You could try booting with a Windows boot disk, and try the following command:

format /mbr

That should wipe your master boot record, and restore it to windows. From there, you should be able to get the Linux fdisk to work again.

[sun7dots]

Originally posted here by roswell1329
You could try booting with a Windows boot disk, and try the following command:

format /mbr

That should wipe your master boot record, and restore it to windows. From there, you should be able to get the Linux fdisk to work again.

I think there should be fdisk /mbr...

[roswell1329]

D'OH!

Of course...how silly of me. fdisk /mbr

[rcgreen]

It almost sounds like the disk has a bad spot
in the medium in the area of the MBR, as if you write
data to the sector, but it's corrupted when you try
to read it back.

Of course, if that were the case, the disk would be history.
Try going through the install procedure again,
and see if you get the same error.

One more possibility. There is a setting in the BIOS,
that protects the MBR (on some computers). You must
make sure it is not on.

[cgkanchi]

I've already tried fdisk /mbr (it was the first thing I did) and it doesn't work. The bad sector thing was what came to mind first but then why are DOS FDISK/Ranish able to write to the MBR successfully. The Linux FDISK isn't even able to read the MBR while all the DOS programs do fine. That's what makes this problem wierd. rcgreen I'll try the CMOS thing and see if it works.
Cheers,
cgkanchi

[rcgreen]

Another long shot possibility. Did the drive have a
utility like "EZ-BIOS" installed on it?

Currently, EZ-BIOS technology is limited to utilities released under StorageSoft, Inc. (includes: EZ-Drive™, EZ-Copy™ and DriveGuide™) as well as vendor-specific editions (includes: Maxtor MaxBlast™ and Western Digital EZ-Install™, et al).

http://www.storagesoft.com/products/...ls/ez_bios.asp

EZ-BIOS is also referred to as a "disk overlay", and was
popular a few years back to make larger drives useable
on older machines. When installed, it puts special program code
on the first track of the drive, and relocates the MBR to the next
track This can cause some wierd errors for programs
that look in the standard location for the MBR.

[cgkanchi]

Nope, it's a 20 gb Seagate Drive on a mobo with the 810 Chipset. Pretty recent.
Cheers,
cgkanchi