Major Hard Drive Issue

[pmcizhere]

So here's what happened. I have a Toshiba Portege m200. I had upgraded it to Vista for the excellent tablet support, but with only 1 GB of RAM its performance was paltry at best. So I downgraded to XP, but in order to do that had to create another partition on the hard drive due to some trickery since the tablet has no optical drive. So I wanted to get rid of that second partition. I used Partition Magic to merge the two, and upon reboot, the process started. I closed the lid during this, while the system was plugged in....And it froze. After re-boot, nothing works right. I wiped the hard drive, and have it set up to boot from PXE to DOS. Fdisk sees the drive as only having 5949 MB total capacity, when I know full well that it's a 40 GB. Using some Samsung HD tools I can format the 40 GB drive, but fdisk will still report 5949 MB total capacity despite it seeing the 40 GB partition!

Is there a tool that can re-write the MBR or Partition Table or whatever caused this issue, so that XP can see the hard drive and re-install? fdisk /mbr does nothing, and it still only sees 5949 MB. Thanks!

 

[KGB]

What happens if you boot from an XP install disk?

Fdisk will not see the full capacity because it is DOS based and hampered by FAT16/32 limitations.

 

[pmcizhere]

See, that's the problem - the m200 has no optical drive. Nor will most external USB optical drives work with it. Here's what progress I made last night:

I can only manage to boot it from PXE, using a piece of software on my main computer. I boot into DOS and connect to my computer's shares - in this case a mounted ISO of the XP setup disk. Now, while setup.exe cannot be run from DOS, \I386\winnt.exe can. I load SMARTDRV first, then launch setup. It copies a bunch of setup files to the hard drive, but when the computer reboots it doesn't see the hard drive as bootable... I already checked the boot order, and LAN is the last option. I've done this before as I managed to downgrade from Vista to XP using this very same setup...

 

[Fardringle]

You can install XP from a USB flash drive. This is one of many online tutorials that show how to do it.

 

[KGB]

Yes, Fardringle has the correct method.

Follow it and report back.

 

[pmcizhere]

I did try that method, and I thank you for your help. But it seems the tablet won't boot from the USB drive. I see the light flash upon boot as if it is being read, but then PXE boots. Again, this is configured in BIOS to be the last boot option. I also tried booting via SD card, to no avail. I read online that the m200 requires a FAT-formatted SD card with a floppy image named $tosfd00.vfd in order for it to attempt to boot. I tried that, and the card is read but then skipped...I would normally at this point just take the hard drive out and hook it up externally to my main computer, but the screw holding the hard drive is stripped. It felt like it was made of sand when I tried to unscrew it, it stripped so easily...

You know, upon further reflection, it seems I need one thing: A utility that can fix any problems that Partition Magic created regarding partitions. From there I should be able to load into PXE, launch winnt, and install Windows. FDISK sees the hard drive as having 5949 MB total space, and when I launch fdisk /status it shows multiple lettered drives, from D: to R:, each 2048 MB in size. So it looks likes a messed up partition table. Once I clear that up once and for all, I should be good to go, no?

 

[Laputa]

Other option is to connect the drive to a desktop system and start the XP installation from there. Then change the hard drive controller driver to standard IDE. Then move the drive back to the laptop. This will require you to have a 3.5-2.5 drive adapter and another external system available. But probably the best route is to find a external USB optical drive that works. This will save you lots of headache.

 

[pmcizhere]

Not sure what I did right, but I connected a different (4200 RPM...) 40 GB HDD to the tablet, and it was still giving me the same issues...I went through the paces, fdisk and format, and it...Worked! Once I have this installation to my liking I'm going to clone it back onto the original HDD as it's a 5400 RPM. I have Windows 7 up and running on it now!

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: pmcizhere
Not sure what I did right, but I connected a different (4200 RPM...) 40 GB HDD to the tablet, and it was still giving me the same issues...I went through the paces, fdisk and format, and it...Worked! Once I have this installation to my liking I'm going to clone it back onto the original HDD as it's a 5400 RPM. I have Windows 7 up and running on it now!

Have you upgraded the RAM then? I am confused as to why you went from Vista, which ran poorly on 1GB RAM but has better tablet support, to XP, which was a bear to install, to Windows 7, a not even beta state yet OS.

 

[pmcizhere]

Nope, didn't upgrade the RAM. I went from XP to 7 because I've read reports online of the OS running on hardware of lower spec than my tablet better than on Vista. It's true, and the tablet support is even better. Running just fine on 1 GB of RAM, and Aero along with the new taskbar is running just fine. It's not my main computer so I won't mind re-installing when necessary.