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SETUP DISK CANNOT FIND DRIVE C
I have a latitude CPx laptop with windowsXP. My hard drive is "C" with no partitions and 6 GB capacity. Recently some nasty spyware has infested my system so I want to format C and clean reinstal windowsXP. On the laptop I can use either a CD or a floppy through the modular bay,but not both at the same time
When I try to run the set up CD on the modular bay it takes me to A prompt but it cannot find drive C which I want to format. Instead it makes C the MS-RAMDRIVE. before reaching A I also see the message that drive C does not contain valid FAT partition etc etc....
The BIOS show the follopwing
Dell Latitude CPx J750GT Setup BIOS Version A08
Primary Hard Drive: 6495 MB
Diskette Drive A: Modular Bay
Diskette Drive B: Not Installed
Diskette Reconfig: Any Time
Boot Cohfiguration
Boot First Device: CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
Boot Second Device: Internal HDD
Boot Third Device: CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
There is no auto detect feature for HDD and for all boot devices the possible settings are:
NONE- INTERNAL HDD - DISKETTE DRIVE - CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive - MODULAR BAY HDD - PCI SLOT NIC - DOCK11/PORT11 NIC - CARDBUS NIC
All passwords in BIOS are set to DISABLED. The BIOS version is A08.
Why is the primary drive appearing as 6495 MB when I have a 6GB drive.?
How can I get to drive C to format it? Please advise.
Nothing happens when I hit F12 at boot. However, I can change the boot sequence to CD via F2. After that when I boot (with XP CD inside ) I end up with " A prompt." If I change that to D and run setup.exe I get a message that this program cannot run in DOS mode.
Is there another way of finding and formating drive C without using the XP CD? I may want to install Win98 instead on it.
Ed C
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Posted December 29th, 2004 09:00