HDD not remembering partions using FDISK

[kissfan]

HI,

This is a new one on me! I am building a setup for a pal
XP1800
BN790E M/B
512Mb Pc133
40 Gig seagate Barracuda

When booting from a Win 98 floppy, I enter FDISK and set the drive parameters as the pal wants 10/30 and exit remembering to set the 1st partition as active.

Upon reboot the drive does not remember its partions and so will not format.

All drive parameters correctly set, only I have not yet enabled SMART as I usually do this after O/S has been installed, and it should make no difference anyway.

Have tried other smaller drives and they are OK, TRIED A 60Gig Maxtor and had same problem. Win 2K boots from CD Ok and formats and partions OK.

I have used FDISK many times to set partitons and format on larger drives than this.

Any suggestions as the pal wants Win 98 installing and without being able to Fdisk and format it's no good, His Win 98 Disk will not boot from CD.

Thanks Guys


KISS FAN


UPDATE

Win 2K could not format the drive!!!

Rebooted with Win 98 floppy haha partion remembered, just trying to format now will keep you updated.

[reboot]

Instead of specifying the size of the partitons in bytes, specify them in percentage. In your case, the first partition is 25%, then you can just use the defaults for the remainder.

[kissfan]

Thanks reboot I did actually try that but to no avail,

Have found the problem now, it would appear that the 512Mb Stick of Ram is faulty have swopped it out with a known good stick and Hey Presto !!

Actually got the drive formatted with the Bad stick but gave many errors during scan disk, as I had seen these before on another build it led me to the Ram.

Thanks for your help guys.

[glc]

This can also be caused by having boot sector virus protection or write protect enabled in the bios.

[kissfan]

Thanks glc, I did ensure that the settings were correct. As previous it has definatley been a problem with the memory module, the machine is now up and running and ticking along fine.

Thanks again