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Resolved Question

What action after an error on formatting a new partition?

Jun 14, 2014 3:07PM PDT

During a process of a fresh install of Windows XP, I get an error on the step of formatting a new partition. At this point, I can't continue of the installation process, and needless to say that I can have the OS on my old PC. Any action I can apply in this situation?

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Wei725 has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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Re: formatting error
Jun 14, 2014 9:03PM PDT

Things you can do:
1. Try again
2. Replace the disk.

Kees

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Thanks for your info
Jun 14, 2014 10:53PM PDT

Thanks Kees for your information.

I get a message, "setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged". And it mentions something about SCSI disk. I have a look at my PC manual, but can't find the disk type.

When I posted my question last night, I wasn't able to do the installation again with a message "error on load ...".

And, I try a quick formatting. It seems to be fine. That is interesting.

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Sounds like a bad disk
Jun 15, 2014 12:22AM PDT

Sounds like a bad disk, or at least one with a few bad sectors. Quick formats work by just setting a value in a special part of the drive saying all sections are free for use. Regular formats goes over each sector and sets that while also zeroing out the data. So if the regular format fails with some kind of read error, at a minimum you likely have a dead spot on the drive, which if some crucial bit of the OS gets written to, you're going to have problems galore.

If you can't find any info about the make and model of the drive via software, you'll have to pull the drive out of the computer and read the label. Then see if you can find some kind of diagnostic software on that company's website. Sometimes you can mark a specific part of the disk as bad and it'll cause that area to be ignored, letting you continue to use the drive. Of course generally speaking, once you get one bad spot they'll usually start multiplying in greater and greater frequency until the drive is essentially useless. So make sure to keep some money set aside for a new drive or just a whole new computer given that XP is no longer receiving any kind of security patches.

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Diagnostic Result Is Fine
Jun 15, 2014 5:54AM PDT

Thanks Jimmy for your insightful information. I have run both the quick and extended test of WD Caviar SE / SE16. It took awhile to complete. The results show "no errors found". So, my hard drive shall be ok although I can't explain why a disk error message show up during a disk formatting.

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Is a virus the cause?
Jun 15, 2014 11:51PM PDT

Now, I have a problem of an internet connection after installing a network driver (NIC). After installing a network driver from the My System page on a Dell ResourceCD, the command ipconfig return a blank data. A person on Dell community forum can't explain why my PC doesn't have an internet connection after the driver installation. That lets me step back and think the hard disk diagnostic test doesn't find any hard disk error, but regular formatting fails. Does that mean that a virus resides on the hard disk? The reason I reinstall Windows XP is that the PC wasn't usable after I downloaded and installed a software claimed to be SP3. Viruses took over the PC.

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Re: virus
Jun 16, 2014 12:32AM PDT

No, it can't be a virus if you formatted.

But you take too big a step in your story to know the problem.
You go from "The install of Windows XP fails because the format fails because of the hard disk error" to "I installed the driver". Clearly, you can't install the driver if the install of Windows XP failed.

Kees

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Answer
About the SCSI message.
Jun 15, 2014 1:26AM PDT

If you know your Windows history, some bright folk long ago wrote the base code to only work with SCSI drives. Later when IDE drives were the norm a "SHIM" was created to support other drives so what you see is a vestige of days long ago.

This can confuse folks new to the inner workings of Windows.
Bob

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Good Knowledge
Jun 15, 2014 5:55AM PDT

Thanks Bob for your educational information.

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Answer
OK, what drive and how are you formatting?
Jun 15, 2014 5:58AM PDT

We know that XP has that 127GB limit and even XP SP3 will format with error on SATA drives without some drivers or in the case of some machines a BIOS setting change.

Keep in mind the age of XP means most expect you to know all about those areas. However to leave out the details means you could be repeating prior issues and no one would guess you didn't know.
Bob

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Go for Linux
Jun 15, 2014 8:00AM PDT

I think that I will install a Linux on the PC sooner or later. I already replaced Windows Vista with Linux Mint on my Dell laptop which I bought in 2007. I have more than enough things to learn in the software field.

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For me that's one option.
Jun 15, 2014 8:24AM PDT

At the office we skipped over Vista and now have a mix of Linux, 7, 8 and Android (which is a form of Linux.)
Bob