On Tuesday 18 December 2001 16:29, dman wrote: > On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 04:06:56PM +0100, Emiel Metselaar wrote: > ... > > | sys c: > > I did this once. Destroyed the disk! I don't recommend doing it > again. > > The story : > A few years back I acquired some antique hardware (Intel 8086 > system, also a 286 mobo+cpu and 25MB MFM hard disk, 2 360K > floppies, and a 486 mobo+cpu+8MB ram). Of course I wanted to play > with it and make it as good as I could (I didn't have any other > stuff either). I took out the 8086 mobo and (with a little case > hacking) stuck the 286 in there. I got the hard drive to work, > but was booting MS-DOS 3.3 off of a floppy. When I got the 486 > I stuck it in, but it wouldn't boot most of the time. With the > 286 in the system I wanted to be able to boot off the hard disk > and not need a floppy. I didn't want to reformat it because I had > already put a bunch of stuff on the disk. My dad suggested the > 'sys' utility. So I tried it : ([] denotes an aside, <> denotes > user action with the machine) > > A:\> sys c: > Please insert a disk into drive C and press return ... > [Huh? It _is_ the disk] > <return> > Please insert a disk into drive C and press return ... > [this can't be good] > <return> > Please insert a disk into drive C and press return ... > <alt-ctrl-del> > Please insert a disk into drive C and press return ... > [uh-oh, I can't even reboot, ^C and ESC didn't work either] > <turns off power> > <turns power back on> > A:\> C: > some error message, I don't remember exactly > [what? what's happening now?] > A:\> chkdsk c: > [wow, this thing is really hosed!] > > Supposedly I could have done a low-level format, then > repartitioned and formatted the disk, but I still have no idea how > to do a low-level format. Instead I got out a screwdriver and > disected the disk. (it was free, outdated, and now busted) > > > I have successfully installed woody, then later win2k on a > single-harddrive laptop. I made a backup bootdisk before installing > win2k since it doesn't ask before stomping over the MBR. With that > boot floppy I was able to boot linux again and fix the MBR, and > haven't had any problems with it since.
ofcourse using a linux boot floppy will work, but it appears that he does not want to install windows the 'normal' way. And for security one can always check using the dos fdisk if you're doing the sys c: on the right partition, you can ofcourse also check doing 'c:' + 'dir'. Ruining of the disk sounds a little bit strange to me by this operation..... Was the disk not already crappy ;-)
