Hard drive disk management problem?

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Superman
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Hard drive disk management problem?

Post by Superman »

I don't really know if this is a problem or not, but my laptop seems to be confused. Whenever I try to reformat using the Windows 7 installation disk, I restart, boot from the CD, then I use the usual "format C:" command at the prompt. Instead of reformatting, it asks for the volume label, and then says "file system is NTFS" or something like that. I finally managed to reformat it, but I did this by running the command for the D drive. So anyway, I reformatted and reinstalled windows.

When I check the disk management screen now, it says it's running from the C drive, like normal. So anyway, I just tried to run the steps to reformat again (to see what would happen) and it's doing the same thing. At the repair boot up command prompt, it just says "file system is NTFS" (format C:). When I tell it to do this for the D drive, it seems to have no problems.

Any idea what's going on here?
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Vendetta
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Re: Hard drive disk management problem?

Post by Vendetta »

If you're using a Windows 7 disk why are you arsing around with a command prompt?

Just click Disk Options (Advanced) when you get to the screen that asks you for a target partition to install to and you can do all of your partition management and formatting there.

Try doing that.
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Superman
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Re: Hard drive disk management problem?

Post by Superman »

Vendetta wrote:If you're using a Windows 7 disk why are you arsing around with a command prompt?

Just click Disk Options (Advanced) when you get to the screen that asks you for a target partition to install to and you can do all of your partition management and formatting there.

Try doing that.
I think this is where I'm having problems. Should I run an install while in Windows or restart and load up from the disk?
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Re: Hard drive disk management problem?

Post by Faqa »

Hm. What are you selecting when you boot from the CD?

Because if you're selecting 'repair' install or some such, it's possible that it's just trying to overwrite your existing installation of windows.

Although I have no idea how you're getting to a command prompt if you boot from the CD. If you boot from the CD and just ask to install a fresh copy, it should format for you.

Is this a 'real' windows 7 cd? Or is it a recovery disk from the company that sold you the laptop?
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Superman
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Re: Hard drive disk management problem?

Post by Superman »

I don't think it's a partition issue. Last I checked, I'm showing a C and E partition, and the E is only 100 mb. I'm not sure why it even thinks I have a D drive.

It's a real Windows 7 disk. I was getting to the prompt from the repair feature, but it's never done anything like this until now. Anyway, the system runs and doesn't seem to have any issues. Maybe I'll just leave it alone. I just thought this is kind of weird.
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Vendetta
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Re: Hard drive disk management problem?

Post by Vendetta »

Superman wrote:I don't think it's a partition issue. Last I checked, I'm showing a C and E partition, and the E is only 100 mb. I'm not sure why it even thinks I have a D drive.
The installer doesn't care what drive letters operating system is using, it will just populate them however it feels. Hell, you don't even need to have drive letters other than C: you can mount other partitions/drives directly as folders.

If you want to do a clean install, boot from the CD, choose a custom install, and use the graphical interface that comes up to do all your partitioning and formatting.
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