OT: Amiga saves pc's butt plan :)

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5 total messages Started by Angus Manwaring Tue, 21 Oct 2003 16:30

#390

Author: Angus Manwaring
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 16:30

37 lines
2364 bytes

Hi all,

This is a pc problem, but the solution may possibly involve my Amiga.

My friend uses a pc and has a problem with his hard drive. He knows even
less than I do about computers and I've been trying to help him fix it.

After contracting a virus we tried to reinstall a ghost image of his
original drive. Unfortunately we messed up the partitions and had to start
from scratch using FDISK from a startup disk.

Trouble is the hard drive keeps getting smaller!

I'm sure it was originally 80 gigs, but FDISK displayed only 40, and
"later that same night" only 20! FDISK doesn't seem to be able to recover
the lost space nor does anything else we've tried.

A couple of times when we've restarted, we have had a bleeping warning
saying that the boot sector (or similar) is being modified.

I think that maybe the root of our problems, and as nobody with a pc (IT
dept included) seems to have a better idea, I wondered about formatting
the drive on my Amiga then taking it back to his pc - in the hope that it
would basically say "What the Flip is this?" and start from scratch and
reinitialise(?) the hard disk - does that sound daft?

Obviously if somebody knows a utility called MaxtorBootSectorFix.zip, that
would be handy too.   :)


Any thoughts?

                  All the best,
                        Angus Manwaring.       (for e-mail remove ANTISPEM)

I need your memories for the Amiga Games Database: A collection of Amiga
Game reviews by Amiga players http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/AGDB.html

Re: OT: Amiga saves pc's butt plan :)

#391

Author: Iain Hibbert
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 21:17

11 lines
1117 bytes

Angus Manwaring <angus@angusm_antispem_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> After contracting a virus we tried to reinstall a ghost image of his
> original drive. Unfortunately we messed up the partitions and had to start
> from scratch using FDISK from a startup disk.

can he boot from a CD?

you could try NetBSD boot floppies or a NetBSD bootable CD.. see
www.netbsd.org

iain

Re: OT: Amiga saves pc's butt plan :)

#392

Author: Neil Bothwick
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 23:51

27 lines
1933 bytes

Angus Manwaring said, 

> I think that maybe the root of our problems, and as nobody with a pc (IT
> dept included) seems to have a better idea, I wondered about formatting
> the drive on my Amiga then taking it back to his pc - in the hope that it
> would basically say "What the Flip is this?" and start from scratch and
> reinitialise(?) the hard disk - does that sound daft?

Not at all. I had to do the opposite of this when an Amiga HD's RDB had
become so corrupted that it would crash ther Amiga on startup. I fdisked
it in a PC and then repartitioned it in HDToolBox.

> Obviously if somebody knows a utility called MaxtorBootSectorFix.zip, that
> would be handy too.   :)

Put it in a Linux box and type

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX bs=512 count=1

replacing hdX with the correct device for the drive.


Cheers

Neil
-- 
"Bother," said Pooh, as he started up DiskSalv

Re: OT: Amiga saves pc's butt plan :)

#393

Author: Angus Manwaring
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 17:28

22 lines
1751 bytes

On 21-Oct-03 21:17:51, Iain Hibbert said
>Angus Manwaring <angus@angusm_antispem_.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> After contracting a virus we tried to reinstall a ghost image of his
>> original drive. Unfortunately we messed up the partitions and had to start
>> from scratch using FDISK from a startup disk.

>can he boot from a CD?

Yes, I mean its currently all working, its just that the HD is pretending
its only a 20 gig drive.

>you could try NetBSD boot floppies or a NetBSD bootable CD.. see
>www.netbsd.org

Thanks Iain, we'll give that a try.


                  All the best,
                        Angus Manwaring.       (for e-mail remove ANTISPEM)

I need your memories for the Amiga Games Database: A collection of Amiga
Game reviews by Amiga players http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/AGDB.html

Re: OT: Amiga saves pc's butt plan :)

#394

Author: Angus Manwaring
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 17:30

33 lines
2242 bytes

On 21-Oct-03 23:51:48, Neil Bothwick said
>Angus Manwaring said,

>> I think that maybe the root of our problems, and as nobody with a pc (IT
>> dept included) seems to have a better idea, I wondered about formatting
>> the drive on my Amiga then taking it back to his pc - in the hope that it
>> would basically say "What the Flip is this?" and start from scratch and
>> reinitialise(?) the hard disk - does that sound daft?

>Not at all. I had to do the opposite of this when an Amiga HD's RDB had
>become so corrupted that it would crash ther Amiga on startup. I fdisked
>it in a PC and then repartitioned it in HDToolBox.

Interesting.... and agreeable to find it was a sensible idea.  :)

>> Obviously if somebody knows a utility called MaxtorBootSectorFix.zip, that
>> would be handy too.   :)

>Put it in a Linux box and type

>dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdX bs=512 count=1

>replacing hdX with the correct device for the drive.

We don't have access to a Linux box unfortunately.

Where's an Amiga One when you want one?!

                  All the best,
                        Angus Manwaring.       (for e-mail remove ANTISPEM)

I need your memories for the Amiga Games Database: A collection of Amiga
Game reviews by Amiga players http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/AGDB.html

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