Hard drive error

Question

I have an Inspiron 8200 w/ P4 1.8Ghz processor and 512 MB RAM. The other day I reformatted the hard drive using the system disk and for some reason it looks like it partitioned the hard drive and installed the new installation on the second partition. On the boot screen it asks which installation I want to open. This is where it gets weird. I went in to delete the first partition and it won't even load. When I search thepartitions, it doesn't show up there. I know it's there because it is using about 10 GB of my hard disk storage.   Is there any way I can fix this without getting a new hard drive? I have done a lot with desktop PC's, but not much in the way of laptops.

rickmktg · Answer

usallens wrote:

I have an Inspiron 8200 w/ P4 1.8Ghz processor and 512 MB RAM. The other day I reformatted the hard drive using the system disk and for some reason it looks like it partitioned the hard drive and installed the new installation on the second partition. On the boot screen it asks which installation I want to open. This is where it gets weird. I went in to delete the first partition and it won't even load. When I search thepartitions, it doesn't show up there. I know it's there because it is using about 10 GB of my hard disk storage.

Is there any way I can fix this without getting a new hard drive? I have done a lot with desktop PC's, but not much in the way of laptops.

Boot to the XP CD, delete all partitions, and start over.

usallens · Answer

I have tried doing that already and have had no results. I wasn't sure if there was anything else to try or if I should just learn to live with it.

rickmktg · Answer

usallens wrote:

I have tried doing that already and have had no results. I wasn't sure if there was anything else to try or if I should just learn to live with it.

Make sure you're booting to the CD, it gives you deletion of partitions as part of the install process.

Storage, Drives & Media

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