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How to Delete hidden partion from Gateway hard disk

T

tiap

Senior member
A friend had a gateway P3 with a quantum 10.2 hdisk. Showsaas a 9.5 gig. The power supply went bad, so I put the guts in a normal case with 300watt ps. Then it booted ok, to find out the ps2 ports were also bad.
Put in a good tyan mb with all his guts and tried to install win 98se but it won't let me. It had goback on it.
So far I have
-written zeros to the drive: no go
-used acronis partition expert that uses linux to delete the ghost partiton: no go
-used ibm's zap.exe: no go
-tried an install of win xp to wipe out the partition: no go, got error code 4
The go back splash screen will come up intermitantly even with the hdisk prevented from boot.
It prevents both win 98 and xp from installing.
Also fdisked the drive in another box, and used datalife in another box. Same results.
Dadlifeguard tests the drive as perfect.
Is there anything other free progs that will wipe this partition.
 
My opinion is I think you're spending too much time on a 10GB hard drive that's probably got one foot in the grave already. I would probably junk the the entire system though. A P3 is pretty old and working on Win9x is just a nightmare waiting to happen anyway.
 

My opinion is I think you're spending too much time on a 10GB hard drive that's probably got one foot in the grave already. I would probably junk the the entire system though. A P3 is pretty old and working on Win9x is just a nightmare waiting to happen anyway.
Click to expand...

I use the latest and greatest too, but I'm just trying to help out a retired person that can't afford to, and as we all know this machine is more than adequate for surfing and email. There is no better xmas gift than giving anything someone will appreciate.

Thanks for the link tk 11. All it said was that there were no defined partitions, therfore it would not delete anything. I assume goback was in fat32.

Any other ideas?
 
Originally posted by: tiap

My opinion is I think you're spending too much time on a 10GB hard drive that's probably got one foot in the grave already. I would probably junk the the entire system though. A P3 is pretty old and working on Win9x is just a nightmare waiting to happen anyway.
Click to expand...

I use the latest and greatest too, but I'm just trying to help out a retired person that can't afford to, and as we all know this machine is more than adequate for surfing and email. There is no better xmas gift than giving anything someone will appreciate.

Thanks for the link tk 11. All it said was that there were no defined partitions, therfore it would not delete anything. I assume goback was in fat32.

Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
No offense intended. I just think you're putting a lot of effort into a piece of hardware that is not worth much these days and probably near or past it's life expectancy anyway. If the drive is bad you could probably find a replacement at a local computer shop for $25 or less. HD's are cheap these days.

I think MFH has a point though - are you comparing unformatted size to formatted size?
 
Drive manufacturers list their drive size using 1,000B = 1KB, 1,000KB = 1MB, etc. Windows uses a slightly different way of calculating size, 1,024B = 1KB, 1,024KB = 1MB, etc. This leads to those kinds of discrepancies.

So your 10.2GB HDD really is 9.5GB. There is no hidden partition.
 
Originally posted by: tiap
A friend had a gateway P3 with a quantum 10.2 hdisk. Showsaas a 9.5 gig. The power supply went bad, so I put the guts in a normal case with 300watt ps. Then it booted ok, to find out the ps2 ports were also bad.
Put in a good tyan mb with all his guts and tried to install win 98se but it won't let me. It had goback on it.
So far I have
-written zeros to the drive: no go
-used acronis partition expert that uses linux to delete the ghost partiton: no go
-used ibm's zap.exe: no go
-tried an install of win xp to wipe out the partition: no go, got error code 4
The go back splash screen will come up intermitantly even with the hdisk prevented from boot.
It prevents both win 98 and xp from installing.
Also fdisked the drive in another box, and used datalife in another box. Same results.
Dadlifeguard tests the drive as perfect.
Is there anything other free progs that will wipe this partition.
Click to expand...



dont worry, we all had to figure that out. But yeah, what M4H posted was a good source of that info.
 
I was well aware of the differences in size reporting.
I did also mention that a goback boot screen comes up after a hdrive format and after booting with a write protected win98 floppy. I doubt that this would be in the cmos of a non Gateway nor on the protected floppy. Had to be on the hdrive.
Anyway, I put the drive in another box, wrote zeros, this time with gateway's gwscan.exe (Made by datalifeguard but perhaps their version), booted win an xpcd and let it install. It finally went without a hitch.
It also reports that it is now 9.7gig. Obviously there was a goback hidden partition of around 200mb.
Now, that the drive is clean, I'll put it back in their box and put win98 back on it.
Nontheless, thanks for all the replies.
 
Hi Tiap, I also have observed the HD showing up as less than it's actual capacity. 9.5 for a 10 gig is what I see. Partition Magic v. 7 or 8 will show the hidden partition, but will fight you about removing it. I'm not sure how I got rid of it, but was successful several times on different drives. I think I had best luck deleteing the partition, creating a new one from it and erasing again. I was then able to add it to the first partition. The hidden partition has never caused any problems loading Win98. I'm not sure about later Wins. Luck, Jim
 
Hi JimPhelpsMI

I did a lot of searching about Gateway's Goback. They say to remove it before formating etc, but since the computer crashed and I had to put another mb in, I couldnt get it to boot in order to do this and then of course the Gateway disks won't work without their mb. Gateway protected this partition even better than IBM does theirs. I was surprised Acronis Partition Expert didn't even touch it, since it usually works well for me.
This is a good example of why I like to stay away from propriety systems like Gateway and Dell. Simple things end up being a pain. Had they originally used a normal power supply, with adequate power, none of this probably would have happened and if it did, it would have been easily repaired. But that's how they sell more boxes.
As an interesting side note,
These people originally bought this computer back when Gateway was pushing the "Pay big bucks now for a system and trade it in later for an real cheap upgrade". I told them at the time that was bull and sure enough just a few months ago when they went back to Gateway for the cheap upgrade, Gateway of course said that systems have changed too much and couldn't honor that. Gee, what a surprise. So I just lost the original sale to Gateway's hype.
 
Try booting with an XP disk..
It should allow you to see any hidden partitions.. And delete them too.
 
Are you trying to keep the OS etc intact? If you are switching motherboards, you really need to format and re-install windows - however you probably won't be able to use any restore or image disk shipped with the Dell computer since image/restore disks are hardware dependant, and typically will not install if they recognize a non Dell computer or non X-branded computer. Images are typically very hardware dependant and you can have issues using them on different hardware, even if they allow installation. That being said, I did switch motherboard/processor with a Win98 loaded hard drive, and it managed to plug and play then new mobo/CPU and work. It's just much better to do a fresh install on a formated hard drive.
 
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