When installing Mandrake on my Toshiba satellite 1800-400 with HDD of 15GB (MK1517GAP), DrakX issues the question
"Which disk/scsi driver should I try?" and displays list of possible drivers to select. I tried several of them and I get different error messages. When I select ataraid, it displays "Found ataraid disk/scsi interfaces Do you have another one?" I select no and click the next button then it displays the error message "An error occured - no valid devices were found on which to create new filesystems."
Can anyone please advice me on what next to do because I can't even format the drive using the product recovery CD-ROM that was provided with the laptop neither can I use any Windows OS to format the disk.
To give more detail about the configuration on the disk before this problem, I had two partitions on the drive with Windows 2000 installed on the other partition and I was about to install Mandrake on the other. When the program was installing Mandrake on the 2nd partition, I cancelled it because the estimated time for the installation was 10 hours. I then tried later to install Mandrake but DrakX then issues the message above (Which disk/scsi driver should I try?)
Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Actually I have had the install provide that prompt when I wasnt supposed to select anything. I just hit cancel and then it started reading the CD rom drive. Might give that a try.

I would have done that if there was an option as such. I tried selecting no when it displays "Do you have any disk/scsi interface?" and I had the same error saying "An error occured - no valid devices were found on which to create new filesystems."

There is a little utility that I use when I have problems with my drive, it is called partbeta. I have been using it for years with excellent success. If you would like, I can email you a copy of the floppy disk image with Win98SE boot disk and the partbeta program. You can use this to erase the partition and reformat it. You should be pretty proficient with such utilities before trying to use this as you can mess up your drive pretty bad if you do something wrong.

I'll be glad if you can send me the utility. I just want try every possible means to get the system back in order. My email is oshobikemi@yahoo.com
Thanks for your help.

j2dizzo

Is there any utility that is bootable from floppy and able to format Linux ext3 filesystem from the disk? because I can't reinstall Windows and neither can I install Linux.

Thanks

j2dizzo

This disk is a boot disk with the utility on it, and I am pretty sure it can do ext3 (I know for sure it can do ext2). Do you have a program that you will need to put the .img on a floppy disk?

BTW, thanks for jinxing me :-P

I am trying to install on my old Dell laptop and it boots off of the CD and then gives a prompt asking which driver to use to access the cd-rom drive.

Hello! How about whatever you were just using you darn boot disk.

I actually don't get you. Which disk are you talking about?

j2dizzo

What disk are you refering to? Can anyone help me with a floppy utility that can delete MBR or format ext2/ext3 filesystem on my HDD.

There is a great partitioning software Partition Magic under windows, that could work from a floppy (it requires 2 of them). It is not a freesoft, but you can download it from internet with the reg number.... and then install somewhere on windows machine, create the boot floppys and then you can use them to format partitions or otherwise manipulate them - windows FATS, ext2, reiserfs, etc.

Under linux there is a lot of softs that can partition and format your disk. But I think that you have to use them from a running system, for example, you could start an install of mandrake 9.2 from iso images and choose the expert booting option, then you can choose that you will partition the disk by hand, then you can format disks, etc.

I have software that can put .img images to floppy, I can mail it to you. Its called FloppyImage, its a downloadable freesoft.

Maybe you can use also windows 98 boot floppy, it has good support for cdrom mechanics and also you can use the fdisk utility, format utility and you can also write something like fdisk /mbr to repair the MBR.

I hope, something from this list will help you.

I was just saying that the utility I mentioned is a bootable floppy disk.