I solved my problem, but what I was going to post might be good to read if you ever find yourself in a similar situation (which I hope you don't) If you have answers to the follwoing questions I would appreciate it very much.
1. Is there a good FAQ somewhere that explains HDD "geometry" terms (cylinders, tracks, sectors, heads, blocks...)
2. Would using the ATA66 channels make all these formats go any faster?
3. Is it possible to render a hard drive completely inoperable through software?
4. When installing win2k, is it a good idea to start with barebones (no sound/NIC/other PCI cards, HDDs on IDE instead of ATA66/100) or do the PlugPlugPlugPlug Play! Play! Play damn you! routine?
I am now in day 2 of the Super Bowl Sunday I Need A Working Computer Daylight-Moonlight Marathon. I had a clean, stable win98SE install on the my 45GB HDD (primary master) and was planning on installing linux on my empty 20gig (primary slave). In the process of setting up the linux filesystem I hit mkswap /dev/hda1 instead of mkswap /dev/hdb1, making the win98 drive unreadable.
After valiant attempts at restoring the 45gig win98 with various boot sector/partition recovery tools I decided to give up and reformat. I have recent backups and it would give me a chance to install win2k clean instead of upgrading.
I loaded up the win2k boot CD and and told it to format over the screwed 45gig. Everything went fine until the restart, where it printed "error loading operating system" Reformatting and loading from the 4 boot disks produced the same results.
Next I tried to load up win98 on the 45gig, to see if it was the win2k install that was bad and that I haven't permanently damaged the harddrive. Install went fine, got into windows. 45gig ok. Next I tried win2k on the 20gig. This time it just hung on the restart, no error message. During all the win2k installs setup refused to let me change the size of the partition and always left 7 or 8MB of 'unpartioned space. win98 fdisk always recognized what the partitions (FAT, NTFS, non-DOS) were *supposed* to be, no matter how screwd up the boot sectors/partition tables on them were.
Then I tried to load up the win98 installation on the 45 gig. Random ASCII characters. Use win98 startup disk to get onto 45gig. try loading windows from c:\windows and it flashes something about registry errors before crashing. How did that happen? I hadn't touched the 45gig during the win2k install. 45GB HDD not OK?
Finally I went back to the Linux install where it notified me the partition on the 45gig "didn't end on a sector" So I used the linux fdisk to delete the partitions on both drives and am currently formatting the 45gig with the win2k boot CD.
Here were my questions:
1. What is going wrong with the win2k install? bad CD?
2. Why did the second win98 install go bad?
System:
Celeron 466mhz
Abit BE6-II rev 2.0 BIOS rev TT (not listed on abit's site) Boot sector virus warning disabled
IBM deskstar 45GB and 20GB
ATI Rage Fury AGP
Creative CDRW 6424
SB PCI512 sound and 3com 3c905b NIC removed for OS install
***************************** What Solved the Problem *************************
Booted from the linux installation CD and used linux fdisk to look at the partitions. fdisk said the partition on the 45 gig 'didn't end on sector' deleted the partition on the drive with linux fdisk, and the win2k install got past the restart and is running fine.
Why did both the win98 format utility and the win2k format utility not wipe out the residual damage from the linux fdisk? Does the answer require in depth knowledge of low-level hardware?
1. Is there a good FAQ somewhere that explains HDD "geometry" terms (cylinders, tracks, sectors, heads, blocks...)
2. Would using the ATA66 channels make all these formats go any faster?
3. Is it possible to render a hard drive completely inoperable through software?
4. When installing win2k, is it a good idea to start with barebones (no sound/NIC/other PCI cards, HDDs on IDE instead of ATA66/100) or do the PlugPlugPlugPlug Play! Play! Play damn you! routine?
I am now in day 2 of the Super Bowl Sunday I Need A Working Computer Daylight-Moonlight Marathon. I had a clean, stable win98SE install on the my 45GB HDD (primary master) and was planning on installing linux on my empty 20gig (primary slave). In the process of setting up the linux filesystem I hit mkswap /dev/hda1 instead of mkswap /dev/hdb1, making the win98 drive unreadable.
After valiant attempts at restoring the 45gig win98 with various boot sector/partition recovery tools I decided to give up and reformat. I have recent backups and it would give me a chance to install win2k clean instead of upgrading.
I loaded up the win2k boot CD and and told it to format over the screwed 45gig. Everything went fine until the restart, where it printed "error loading operating system" Reformatting and loading from the 4 boot disks produced the same results.
Next I tried to load up win98 on the 45gig, to see if it was the win2k install that was bad and that I haven't permanently damaged the harddrive. Install went fine, got into windows. 45gig ok. Next I tried win2k on the 20gig. This time it just hung on the restart, no error message. During all the win2k installs setup refused to let me change the size of the partition and always left 7 or 8MB of 'unpartioned space. win98 fdisk always recognized what the partitions (FAT, NTFS, non-DOS) were *supposed* to be, no matter how screwd up the boot sectors/partition tables on them were.
Then I tried to load up the win98 installation on the 45 gig. Random ASCII characters. Use win98 startup disk to get onto 45gig. try loading windows from c:\windows and it flashes something about registry errors before crashing. How did that happen? I hadn't touched the 45gig during the win2k install. 45GB HDD not OK?
Finally I went back to the Linux install where it notified me the partition on the 45gig "didn't end on a sector" So I used the linux fdisk to delete the partitions on both drives and am currently formatting the 45gig with the win2k boot CD.
Here were my questions:
1. What is going wrong with the win2k install? bad CD?
2. Why did the second win98 install go bad?
System:
Celeron 466mhz
Abit BE6-II rev 2.0 BIOS rev TT (not listed on abit's site) Boot sector virus warning disabled
IBM deskstar 45GB and 20GB
ATI Rage Fury AGP
Creative CDRW 6424
SB PCI512 sound and 3com 3c905b NIC removed for OS install
***************************** What Solved the Problem *************************
Booted from the linux installation CD and used linux fdisk to look at the partitions. fdisk said the partition on the 45 gig 'didn't end on sector' deleted the partition on the drive with linux fdisk, and the win2k install got past the restart and is running fine.
Why did both the win98 format utility and the win2k format utility not wipe out the residual damage from the linux fdisk? Does the answer require in depth knowledge of low-level hardware?
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