Old linux hdd ://

[LTF]

Really wierd one this, last night i formatted (a good few times in the end) an old 10gb hdd that previously had mandrake on.
Chucked it in another machine as a slave, used disk manager to do a full ntfs format.
Put the hdd back in its intended machine, boot 2000 from cd, it runs through the first partition of the setup. Machine restarts, cd is removed. and when it tries to boot from the hdd ig get the following:

99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99


://

Urm! Never come across this before, is there something on that disk left over from linux? How can this happen? Or is it something totally different?

 

[(Shovel)]

Did you reformat with an error check?

With the old partition magic boot disk I still use you have an option to error check the disk for bad sectors while formatting. It takes hours, and hours (certainly on newer, bigger disks) and I usually don't bother with new drives, but maybe hunting out something like that (using a DOS boot disk and DOS based Partition Magic utility in this case - it has a reasonable windows 95 style GUI) will solve your problem.

 

[Testin da Cable]

your MBR is corrupt. fdisk /MBR will solve it

 

[LTF]

 

[Testin da Cable]

 

[(Shovel)]

Originally posted by Testin da Cable
your MBR is corrupt. fdisk /MBR will solve it

What does that do to it? Does that wipe it and let you reinstall over it? Or does it restore an old one?

I had fun a few weeks back when I wiped the XP boot loader with LILO... had to reinstall XP to get back into it... was a tad embaressing.

 

[Testin da Cable]

it writes a brand spanking new master boot record. the data on the disk will still be there...maybe, but you'll need a bootfloppy to get at it heh. perhaps the XP repair function will let you fix it, but I've never tried that option.

 

[(Shovel)]

Nope, XP repair was a bag of crap.

That was my instant reaction. I mean, your average nasty virus, the boot record is going to be the target to hit. Does the XP repair restore this pretty basic (on windows at least) part of the disk? Bollocks does it.

 

[Testin da Cable]

what can I say? I expect there are ways to fix it without possible catastrophic loss of data, but I've never had to dream one up

 

[LTF]

Ficsed!!!1

Thanks tdc for being responsible for teaching me something new for the day \o/

 

[Testin da Cable]

npies my bill for €3750 consulting fees is in the mail