How to install Puppy in this situation (No partition recognized?!?!)

[mrbball151]

Big problem with my laptop. Things have progressively went from bad, to horrid. What started off as an error on startup, has turned into a full blown issue. Long story short, the current problem is that on startup, I get a "operating system not found" message (I had windows XP installed).

So, I put in the Vaio recovery cd. That won't work because it says, "cannot detect partition settings".

Next, I remember that I had made a Puppy cd awhile back (I'm running Puppy on the computer I'm typing from right now), and to try and give that a shot. Well, Puppy loaded from the cd. My plan is/was to install Puppy on the laptop, that way all the crap on my hard drive is fixed/cleared out, and then I can run my sony recovery cd.

Problem -- As I was reading the instructions on how to install Puppy to a computer, one of the first steps it to create a partition from Gparted Partition manager. When I open that up on my laptop, there are no partitions at all to choose from, and no options to choose to create a partition!

How can I create a partition, or install puppy, or hell, fix this issue?!

[rokytnji]

Go inti your Bios and see if your hardrive shows up in there. If it doesn't it is probably toasted.

[rokytnji]

Also you can open up a Terminal in Puppy and post the output of

fdisk -l

and copy and paste in your next post.

[mrbball151]

Oh no, I hope it's not toast!

I'm not sure how to verify if it shows up in BIOS or not, but I don't think it did...

To give a little more information -- After I got the "Error, OS not found/detected", I put in the Vaio recovery cd, AND IT WORKED. But, instead of running the recovery/reinstall, I wanted to get the files from my harddrive before doing that. So since I have a external hard drive enclosure, I went through the long process of removing the hard drive, and hooking it up with the enclosure. I turned on my working computer, and checked the hard drive for my files. Well, two new "drives" were located. E and F. E had some random files (seemed like system files, totaled ~5 GB, non of my documents), and F drive which was blank and it asked me if I wanted to "format". I clicked cancel and said forget it, my documents are gone, I will have to do the recovery cd. I put everything back in exactly the way it was, and then put in the recovery cd.

Now it doesn't work when I put it in.

I don't see how I could have messed anything up by taking it out as I was very careful with everything.

I tried to put fdisk -1 (I assumed that the -1 was the dash sign and the number 1?).

The output I got was the following:

fdisk: invalid option -- 1
Usage: fdisk [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK Change partition table
fdisk -1 [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK List partition table(s)
fdisk -s PARTITION Give partition size(s) in blocks
fisk -v Give fdisk version

Here DISK is something like /dev/discs/disc0/disc
and partition is something like /dev/discs/disc0/part1
-u: give Start and End in sector (instead of cylinder) units
-b 2048: (for certain MO disks) use 2048-byte sectors

[rokytnji]

Sorry for the confusion. That is fdisk -l with a lower case L. Not a 1 like you tried to do.. Is this HD a IDE or SATA?

I was up late last night ringing in my birthday with some friends and was a little sauced when I replied to your post. Disregard my Toast Comment.

Just for info purposes, the small L in fdisk is like asking for a LIST of partitions on Hardrive. I know you say you were careful, but one thing that needs to be established is if Bios still recognizes Hardrive. It has to list it. It might help to know what make and model of computer and make and model specs of said hardrive to. That way we might be able to see how to access Bios. Be good for you to know also.
I would recheck your cable connections on the back also. If it is a IDE hardrive, It will have a 40 pin ribbon cable that is approx. 2 inches wide, with a seperate 4 or 5 pin white/clear plastic power connector next to it. If Sata its just a small black squarish small connector. It sounds like it is ok since it was picked up on external enclosure, so you should be ok. I'm gonna try and google sony viao and see what i get for bios.

[rokytnji]

F3 is the key to press at Bootup screen for Sony Viao.

How to access/enter Motherboard BIOS