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Formatting issue.
SALAD - 21/5/10 at 01:38 PM

My laptop won't let me format the hard drive.
I'm trying to wipe XP off it and it keeps saying it can't format the hard drive because a window is open blah blah.....?

Any ideas? Am I being stupid or something??

cd.thomson - 21/5/10 at 01:49 PM

youre not trying to format the active partition are you?

i.e. youre not trying to format your C drive from within windows which is running on your C drive?

big-vee-twin - 21/5/10 at 01:53 PM

Cant do it in windows need to do it before windows starts

SALAD - 21/5/10 at 01:53 PM

Ha, who would try and do such a thing?!..........Yes Craig, yes I am.

Now what?

Mr G - 21/5/10 at 01:57 PM

If you've got a windows install disc then you can boot up into that and select to remove the active partition and format the hard drive before the windows install.

BenB - 21/5/10 at 01:59 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Mr G
If you've got a windows install disc then you can boot up into that and select to remove the active partition and format the hard drive before the windows install.


Yup, wot he said, do it from the install disk....

SALAD - 21/5/10 at 02:00 PM

I'm trying to remove XP and install 98. Had the 98 disk in and the computer set to boot from disk and it didn't (loaded up XP instead). Then I tried finding the format option in BIOS before XP loaded and couldn't find it.....??

Davey D - 21/5/10 at 02:06 PM

why on earth would you want to remove XP, and install 98? 98 is so outdated now, that you will struggle to find drivers for new devices. It is also built on a crap flakey platform

SALAD - 21/5/10 at 02:08 PM

It's for the Toughbook going to be used for megajolt.
All the drivers I can find to make the laptop work fully, wireless, touchscreen etc, only run to 98.

David Jenkins - 21/5/10 at 02:10 PM

I run mine on Windoze 2000 on my lappie...

Mr G - 21/5/10 at 02:11 PM

Tried changing all boot devices to cd-rom? I.e first boot device, second boot device, third boot device

SALAD - 21/5/10 at 02:11 PM

It's not to get the megajolt working, it's to get the laptop fully functional.

Mr G - 21/5/10 at 02:13 PM

What OS was originally on the laptop as standard?

SALAD - 21/5/10 at 02:14 PM

I dont think it will let me Mr G. It lets you cycle through the boot options as in disk drive, hard drive etc then hard drive, disk drive etc etc but not to input all disk drive or as an option...?

There is a sticker on the bottom for Windows 98.
It didn't have one when I got it.

[Edited on 21/5/10 by SALAD]

Mr G - 21/5/10 at 02:26 PM

The thing with getting xp to run properly on old laptops is to make sure you note down all the hardware via the device mananger while its got its original old os on it - this is the problem in your case if you say it came without one loaded

Without knowing the exact hardware specific drivers being used and finiding the proper xp equivalents you can have a right old time getting newer OS running properly as xp defaults to generic drivers.

I've put xp on 2 very old laptops and was lucky enough to be able to see via 98 the specific drivers it needed (graphics/network etc etc) for the install.

In all honesty going back to 98 would be a very last resort in my book. What are your issues with hardware on it with xp?

Edit : Should of said whats the model number? (It's Panasonic I presume)

[Edited on 21/5/10 by Mr G]

Mr G - 21/5/10 at 02:41 PM

Pop in your model number HERE and search for the windows 2000 drivers if its quite old not xp and you might have some luck, especially with touchscreen drivers


[Edited on 21/5/10 by Mr G]

SALAD - 21/5/10 at 02:42 PM

As far as I can workout via the world wide web, I need to install the drivers to get all the aspects of the toughbook to work, i.e. touchscreen, wireless etc.
The problem is all the drivers I can find only go up to 98.
If the equivilant XP drivers can be found, I'll go with them, but no luck as yet.
There is a list of drivers under system information on the laptop but I don't know enough about all this!

I've tried that site, but for XP. Will the Windows 2000 drivers work then?!

[Edited on 21/5/10 by SALAD]

Mr G - 21/5/10 at 02:50 PM

Yes they should be ok - Nothing to lose anyway giving them a try

Whats your model number?

SALAD - 21/5/10 at 02:51 PM

CF27
Mk2 I think

Mr G - 21/5/10 at 02:59 PM

Worth trying the close model numbers as well if the cf-27 one doesn't work i.e try the cf-28 drivers - there is a cisco wireless driver for it.

SALAD - 21/5/10 at 03:06 PM

Thanks Mr G, I'll give it a try.....fingers crossed.

SteveWalker - 21/5/10 at 03:06 PM

It's certainly worth looking for 2000 or NT drivers, you should be able to use both of those under XP.

[Edited on 21/5/10 by SteveWalker]

Mr G - 21/5/10 at 03:14 PM

Right I've got to go and cut the grass otherwise the gardening inspector (SWMBO) will not be happy.

Googled these results which confirmed using the cf-28 driver, although it seems to depend on the age of your cf-27 (old uses serial for the screen,newer ps2)

Link1

Link2

Link 2 is a link thats mentioned in the Link1 thread.

Let me know how you get on, hopefully we can get you up and running and keep your OS in the 21st century

G

SALAD - 21/5/10 at 03:38 PM

Thanks alot G. I will carry on....see what happens!

britishtrident - 21/5/10 at 03:40 PM

Xp drivers may not be on the net because they may already be included in XP or can be found automatically by xp via Microsoft.

austin man - 21/5/10 at 04:41 PM

I us a programme called vmware that can be run within XP you install 98 into the vmware emulator

mangogrooveworkshop - 21/5/10 at 05:27 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Davey D
why on earth would you want to remove XP, and install 98? 98 is so outdated now, that you will struggle to find drivers for new devices. It is also built on a crap flakey platform


Our telco equipment as well as a lot of industrial equipment runs at 9600 baud max.
We use hyper terminal and that is very stable on 98. As well as that the toughbook he is using doesnt have the poke to run later ms offerings.
And as for emulators and workarounds on newer laptops are not very stable.....standing at a dead telco cab outage at 1 am in the morning with a flashy piece of dumb silicon is not what you want.
The dam thing wants to connect to every wifi in the area instead of the VIRTUAL serial port.

a 1000 £ laptop almost got crunched by me at midnight last night.


Pulled the £20 toughbook out and a few mins the outage is cleared...no fuss.
problem is the two icons for telco and Mega Squirt are almost the same..resulting in the squirt screen coming up


The moral of the story is not all older equipment will work with a new laptop as it is either too fast or the drivers don't exist. So there is a good reason to use laptops of the same age as the gear you are formatting.

[Edited on 21-5-10 by mangogrooveworkshop]

plantman - 21/5/10 at 07:18 PM

You're not alone in wanting to do that......
You first make a windows 98 boot disc (floppy)
I think you can make it using you're 98 cd or just download it from the web.

Then use that boot disc to delete the xp partion.

Then you set your lappie to boot from cd drive and put your cd in and start your laptop

It should install windows

You may have to create a partition with the floppyy drive

have fun

iank - 21/5/10 at 08:32 PM

W2K and XP Drivers are apparently available according to this advert (doesn't say where you can get them unfortunately).

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PANASONIC-TOUGHBOOK-CF-27-FULLY-RUGGED-LAPTOP-/250636205183

Madinventions - 22/5/10 at 12:00 AM

Don't forget about www.devid.info! Get the 'hardware Info' for the device from device manager and paste it into this website. If there's a driver out there for your hardware - this will find it. Works for me every time.

Ed.

Madinventions - 22/5/10 at 12:06 AM

Don't forget about www.devid.info! Get the 'hardware Info' for the device from device manager and paste it into this website. If there's a driver out there for your hardware - this will find it. Works for me every time.

Ed.

Liam - 23/5/10 at 06:52 PM

Er, if you can't boot from a CD now, you wont be able to after you've formatted your hard drive either! Then your laptop will be essentially a complicated brick. You need to fix that issue first. Hopefully you can find XP drivers, but if not it might be new laptop time (or slightly newer second hand). Surely if it's so old you cant find XP drivers for the hardware, it's pretty tired anyway?