Do you know the manufacturer of the disk drive? It is probably a Toshiba
but it could be IBM, WD, Seagate ...

Once you find out, go to the manufacturers disk site and download a zero
disk utility and the manufacturer diags to test the disk. If it fails to
pass the tests, it is dead.


I am trying to remember if the old SYSCHK utility reads what brand of hard
drive is installed. It is easier to find it out this way instead of tearing
apart the laptop. Or is the HP easy to access the drive.

Another thing, make sure the laptop drive is firmly seated in the unit,
maybe a poor connection.



"Adam White" wrote in message
.. .
My friend gave me their fairly old laptop (HP Omnibook 900) because
"it doesn't work anymore." It was giving "failure to load OS" error
message after successful POST. I booted from W2K OS disk, intending
to format the HD and install new copy of OS. I deleted all existing
partitions, then created one ("c") from all unpartitioned space (6
Gb), then formatted it. Format got to 100% complete, then said
"unable to format disk." I rebooted from the W2k disk, choosing
Repair Console option. Did a "format c:" which went through to 100%
complete again, and this time did not give me any error message. But
when I type "dir C:" I get error message saying something like "disk
enumeration failure." What the heck does this mean?

I've tried formatting the drive NTFS and FAT32, but I can never do a
DIR on it after formatting completes. I assume the drive must have
failed, even though it's not making any strange noises. Any other
ideas about why this is happening or how I might tell for sure?

Thanks
Adam