restore dell diagnostics partition

epicwinter,

i think you must have accidentally deleted the partition.. because it should exist if you hadn't deleted it. and i don't think you'd be able to restore it unless you have a newer version of the drivers and utilities disc, i think verA02.. i'm not very sure about the version, but if you want to restore it you need to find a program called blast.exe in your drivers and utilities disc, so run a search on it.

"I have also tried downloading and installing the Diagnostic update and it says the same thing " No Dell Diagnostics Partition Found"."
and the download that you're trying to install cannot be installed if you don't have the diagnostic partition. and as for the size, i think it should be about 30mb.

thanks for the reply. I searched for the blast.exe and all i could find is stuff on the blaster worm and some other random stuff. I am assuming this is some dell proprietary disk imaging software. There must be another way though.

I am thinking that because supposeable you can reinstall the diagnostics utilities if you have the disk then I should be able to do this because I have the disk. I even get prompted to put the disk in and then it freezes because of my misconfigured partition. So if I could get the partition configured correctly I think it should reinstall. Could someone maybe run a cfdisk, fdisk or some partitioning program on their box and tell me eveything it says about their diagnostics partition?

Any other suggestions????
-thanks

epicwinter,

i deleted that partition too and now i can't run dell diagnostic off the hard disk.. i called dell technical and the guy simply brushed me off as it's impossible to install that partition again.. i called another time and this time the lady told me that it is possible but only with the latest drivers and utilities disc that comes with dell notebooks, she told me it is version A02.. i'm not sure how you got the info on blaster worm.. what i meant was to search in your cd, not the internet, hmm, or maybe the cd does contain info on blaster worm.. but anyways, you can just see the cd and look under revision.. if it's A02, then most probably, you have that program..

if not then basically that partition is only made available so that you can run diagnostic off the hard disk, and losing that partition won't harm your computer in any way.. if you need to run diagnostic, just pop in the cd and press F12 for the one time boot menu and select your cdrom as the boot device and the diagnostic utility will come up.. draw back? you can't update the diagnostic suite to the latest one by dell..

and one more thing, you can't reinstall that partition yourself even if you have the program (dell diagnostic), the only way to reinstall that partition is by using that blast.exe program written specifically for as you said disk imaging.. and according to the girl, you would have to lose all your data in order to create that partition as the program will wipe out all data on the disk and the program will create two partitions automatically, one for the diagnostic and the other for your os..

Message Edited by ethanweku on 05-20-2004 02:04 AM

hmm then i guess the girl must have lied to me about the A02 having that program.. and you mean to say that previously you were able to run dell diagnostic off the cd but now you can't? hmm.. are you still under warranty? if you are then call dell up to have your system checked..

as far as i know, when you try to run diagnostic off the cd, the cd doesn't attempt to write to the hard disk, i think it just loads itself into your memory and runs from there.. and you mean you're using linux? i don't have any experience at all in linux and i cannot help you in that area.. i know fdisk works in win98 and winme but winxp doesn't have fdisk anymore.. one of the forum members here have a ghost image of the dell diagnostic partition but i'm not sure if you can get it running, and i forgot who is it.. i did a post like you way back maybe you should run a search for it and find the forum member..

also i'm not sure, but i think you maybe able to download a diagnostic utility and burn it into a cd and then run diagnostic from that burnt cd.. you have to look under downloads provided for your inspiron or latitude..

ethanweku-
thanks again for the replies. I did also search the cd for the blast.exe but it is not there, funny thing is the cd says "Revision A02". Now I would be pretty happy if I could run the diagnostics from the cd but that doesn't even work. When I put the cd in and boot from it it just hangs. And I have been booting from pleny of cds so it isn't how my boot options are set up. In the past it use to boot from this cd no problem. So as far as I can tell I can't run the Diagnostics at all. I actually believe when you boot from cd it attempts to install the diagnostics partition on disk and in that case i think it just hangs cause something is wrong with my disk.

Any chance you can go to fdisk or partition magic or cfdisk from linux and tell me what it says about your partition?
-ryan

mmmmm.....I guess this narrows down the problem to: Why can I NOT boot off my Drivers and Utilities Disk?
Is it because the disk is bad? Or in my own opinion it is because when this disk boots it attempts to reinstall the partition and mine is messed up. I wish someone could verify or unverify my claim of this.

In response to the other reply I do not have access to the blast.exe and personally I guarantee there is an easier way to do this then by wiping your whole system. THe diagnostic partition is just a dos based partion that can be booted to from the NTFS XP partition. Nothing more, there is no magic. From what i know it is a hidden fat partition, maybe fat 16, it needs to be the first partition of the drive. I doubt very much the size is that important other than there being enough size. There is obviously something I am missing though. I mean i downloaded a diagnostics update tool which attempted to update the software but couldn't find the partition. So if the partition is created properly then it should be fine. The only big unknown I can come up with is there is some kind of Dell marker sector maybe even a special bootsector that dell puts in that partition to signify that it is the "Diagnostic Partition" to the update tool.

epicwinter,

---

mmmmm.....I guess this narrows down the problem to: Why can I NOT boot off my Drivers and Utilities Disk?

---

have you tried other bootable discs? such as the winxp or linux cds you have? try slotting them in and see if the system can boot from there and then quit. that should answer whether your drive is faulty or the cd is faulty.

---

Or in my own opinion it is because when this disk boots it attempts to reinstall the partition and mine is messed up.

---

as i told you before, the disk does not attempt to reinstall the partition.. have you ever worker with maxblast3? or hitachi drive fitness test? i believe it's the same as that, instead in this case, the software is targetted at the entire computer system. basically, for maxblast3 and hitachi drive fitness test, the program is loaded into the memory and run from there.. the program does not attempt to recreate the partition in your disk because you need to type in the command "blast" in ms-dos prompt to tell it to create the partition, it wouldn't do so by itself..

---

and personally I guarantee there is an easier way to do this then by wiping your whole system.

---

unfortunately, if you were to speak to the dell technical support, they will tell you it's impossible to do that.. however if you do come up with a way to do it without having to wipe out the entire hard disk, then please post back to this forum as i'm eager to get back my partition too..

---

There is obviously something I am missing though. I mean i downloaded a diagnostics update tool which attempted to update the software but couldn't find the partition. So if the partition is created properly then it should be fine.

---

If you said that if the partition was created properly, then it should be fine, have you tried doing that? have you tried creating a fat partition using partitionmagic? if you have, then you'll realise that it's still not possible to install the diagnostic software.. even if you had wiped out the entire hard disk and deleted all partitions, and used winxp installation cd to create two partitions, one 30mb and the other for your os, you'll again realise that after you've installed your os, and you're trying to update the diagnostic software, you still can't do it.. i've tried what i said above and they didn't work for me.. which is why i resigned to booting from the dell cd. and you said in your second post about linux.. are you using linux or winxp? i'm confused here.. if you're using linux or have recently transferred from xp to linux then i think the problem maybe software wise.. try going http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=linuxport&message.id=782 and see if that helps.. or rather browse the forum for linux troubleshooting..

The drivers and utils disk is the only one that will not boot, windows xp boots, lots of other disks boot. But if I go to it from windows i can use it to install normal drivers and utils without a problem. I am running a dual boot system windows xp and linux. I am aware of using that technique from the thread you linked me too, but xp is still my primary bootloader so i generally try to get to the diagnostics from there. Yes I have tried to recreate a hidden fat 16 partition at the front of the drive but that didn't work and I believe it is because one of the attributes is not right about it. I don't know what. Unfortunately you I am sure your are right, dell tech support won't tell me anything. All they will say is you need to use the disk, most likely because they were never told how the partition works.

Thanks for all your replies ethanweku, it seems like I am stuck. I can't use the diagnostics in any way from disk or drive and I also don't seem to have the version of the disk that will recreate it.

epicwinter,

actually, there is still the option of recreating the diagnostic yourself.. search for Dell 32 Bit Diagnostics (Graphical User Interface version) in Dell's download site.. the instructions are available after you click on a file to download. hope that works and you'll be able to run diagnostic eventually.

I replace the original hard drive so do not have the diagnostics partition. I tried booting off the disk and out of about 12 tries I got it to boot once.

5150
Mobile P4 3.06 HT
64mb Nvidia
768 Ram
UXGA Samsung
Hitachi 60GB Hard Drive 7200 RPM
1300 Wireless
DVD+RW NEC 5100a
Bios A29
XP Home

ethanweku- didn't see there was a page 2 just sq your reply. I will have to try this i did try the update tool but maybe I can get this to work. I have faith that there has to be a way....

okay good luck and do post back here if you've found the solution cause i'm sure a lot of people will be interested

Well I am going to put a 7k60 HD in my 8600 in a few days and am going to try to create/copy this partition.  I am going to make my current 60GIG Fijitsu my backup drive and use it in the media bay.  So I want to have this utility available at all times and also want to figure out how to create it.

Has anyone tried messing around with the Dell 32-bit Diagnostics Utility Partition Contents Upgrade Tool, v.UpUpdate.A1232, A1232  to see if that will create the partition, or maybe give some information about how it is created.  I noticed that XP recognizes the Diagnostic partition as a EISA Configuration - anyone know how to create this kind of partition?  It says that it is 31MB FAT so it must be FAT16, so maybe if we just create a FAT16 partition at the beginning of the drive with the Dell Diagnostic files and fig out how to do a EISA Config we can get it.

I'm def going to try figure this out because it has to be simple and it is aggravating me.

Message Edited by i8000_coastal on 06-20-2004 06:19 AM

Got those looking for the utility partition check this one:

 

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_harddrive&message.id=33359

 

Thanks

rapco.