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FREE SOFTWARE
We are now running OPEN SOURCE workshops.

Open Source gets the go-ahead from OGC
Public bodies urged by Office of Government Commerce to "develop skills in open source development and deployment". (Kable)

Geek quote of the day:
LINUX is not The Answer.
YES is the Answer.
LINUX is The Question.

Reclaim your data! Clearing a hard drive's partition sector

  • OVERVIEW: Some software like disk partitioners, disk overlay managers, Windows > 2000, and other viruses, can mis-partition your hard drive beyond recovery by DOS fdisk. Often it is possible to clean the mbr by using an undocumented DOS command: fdisk /mbr In some cases however this is not enough, and we will have to manually erase the first sector of the Drive to forcibly clean the partition sector.

  • GOAL: Wipe clean an IDE Hard Drive's partition sector.

  • HOW-TO: This has to be done using Assembly Language. The code you will use here is the next step up from ones and zeros for the computer, very low level, so you cant afford mistakes. ie: ENTIRELY-AT-YOUR-OWN-RISK
    Having said that, I have used this script many many times and have never done any damage to a disk.
COMMENTS
COMMAND INSTRUCTIONS
OUTPUT

- Make sure your data is securely backed up to another disk or CD.
- ONLY the disk you are operating on should be attached to an IDE socket, temporarily disconnect any others.
- You will need these instructions printed out, and a Windows 98 boot disk.

Boot from the Windows disk, choose "Start Without CD Rom Support"

After boot, TYPE: DEBUG [ENTER] then type the stuff thats written in this colour, and press enter after each line:

 - f 200 L200 0
- a 100
xxxx:xxxx mov ax,301
xxxx:xxxx mov bx,200 - no spaces between "x,2"
xxxx:xxxx mov cx,1
xxxx:xxxx mov dx,0080
xxxx:xxxx int 13
xxxx:xxxx int 3
xxxx:xxxx (Press ENTER an extra time here)
- g=100
xxxxxx ignore register display xxxxxx
- q (quits back to DOS)

Reboot with diskette to use FDISK

Troubleshooting:
- untested on drives larger than 20gig, though it shouldn't make any difference, should it? ;) Let us all know if you find out.

Back to comm-tech Tech Support Resources.

************************************************************
copyleft kazim-at-comm-tech

This program/how-to is freeware; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;

This program/article is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License (GPL) for more details. ************************************************************
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