[SWLUG] Deadtop

[Julian Hall]

Hi Rhys,

DOS won't read an NTFS partition.  If the HD is still formatted to NTFS you
will need a "non-MSDOS" boot disk.

I would suggest the solution that got me out a of hole last week.
www.freedos.org.  It has a much better FDISK utility than the MS-DOS variant
and will give you a boot disk that will show whatis really on the HD, not
what Mickeyshaft thinks is there.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/beta9r
c5/fdos1440.img

It's a floppy disk image so you'll need something to write the image to the
floppy disk, but I think this is your best bet.

Kind regards,

Julian


-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-admin at swlug.org.uk [mailto:discuss-admin at swlug.org.uk]On
Behalf Of Rhys Sage
Sent: 25 May 2004 14:37
To: discuss at swlug.org.uk
Subject: [SWLUG] Deadtop


It appears that my laptop is a deadtop.

After buying the latest DVD edition of Linux Format,
with lots of software for older computers I went to
install slackware on my laptop.

Switched it on. Dead. So I plugged it in to charge.
The charge level rose to 35% then leapt to 100%. I
unplugged. Switched the laptop on. Still dead. Plugged
the charger in and switched the laptop on. It came up
indicating it needed to boot from a floppy disk. Took
the hard drive out and plugged it into my XP box. It
came up as unformatted. Very odd because it was
formatted to NTFS 4. Reformatted (nothing much was on
the drive anyway) and ran Norton over it. No problems.
Put the drive back in the laptop. Laptop still doesn't
recognise it. Used FDISK and was told there was no
hard drive present. I used a DOS disk and booted the
system from floppy. Looks like it's now the equivalent
of the 286 no HDD based system I was using 20 years
ago.

So, the question is - am I missing anything or is my
diagnosis of the motherboard being dead likely to be
correct?

Rhys





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