18 Maintaining and Troubleshooting Your Solo Notebook
Formatting the hard drive
Formatting your hard drive using format.exe creates a new root directory and File
Allocation Table (FAT) on the hard drive. You will need to reformat the hard drive
and reinstall Windows 95 if your operating system has been damaged.
1.
Place the Solo Boot Diskette or the MS-DOS Setup diskette in the drive.
2.
Start the computer or restart the system if you already have the power on.
3.
The boot disk Main menu appears. Select
Exit Program
,
Go Back to DOS
. The
A:\> prompt appears on the screen.
4.
Type:
cd dos
then press <Enter>.
5.
At the A:\DOS prompt type:
format c: /s
-OR-
type the letter of the partition you want to format. Example:
format d: /s
then press <Enter>.
6.
The format program asks if you wish to proceed with the format. Press
Y
to
continue.
7.
When the hard drive is formatted, the system asks you to label the hard drive.
Labeling is optional:
If you want to clear the question press <Enter>
-OR-
If you want to give the hard drive a label name, type a label name and press
<Enter>.
Formatting the hard drive
Note:
To help ensure a clean
installation, we recommend
that you partition and format
the hard drive before
reinstalling Windows 95.
However, if you are want to
preserve valuable data by not
erasing files on the hard drive,
you can first try installing the
operating system using the
procedure “Installing
Windows 95” on page 19. If
you continue to have difficulty
with the operating system
working properly, then return
to the partitioning and
formatting procedures before
installing Windows 95.
Warning!
Formatting the hard drive
erases all information on the
drive! Back up your files on
the drive before formatting.
Note:
If the Fixed disk boot sector
option in the Security menu is
set to Write protect, the boot
sector of the hard disk drive is
write-protected, and you
cannot format the hard drive.
Refer to the “Security menu”
section on page 71 to enable.
