I am trying to format and I get this message when I try to access drive c: Invalid Media Type reading drive c. How do I correct this?

Hello Cuboatin and welcome,
What this is telling you is that your C: drive is not readable or does not recognize anything there.
Was this a working drive before?
A little more info about what your setup is and how its configured will help.

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Quotes from "Lifes Little Instruction Book" by H.Jackson Brown: 65) Let people pull in front of you when you're stopped in traffic. Frank's Place (http://www.members.aol.com/frankscompsrvice)

well I am trying to format a 30 g drive that was originally 2 drives. It was okay until I ran FDISK and now it will read drive d, but gives me that message on drive c. There is no o/s currently installed. I was trying to make 1 drive before I installed the O/s.


Originally posted by bassman:
Hello Cuboatin and welcome,
What this is telling you is that your C: drive is not readable or does not recognize anything there.
Was this a working drive before?
A little more info about what your setup is and how its configured will help.

Lets see if this sounds correct:
You ran Fdisk, you deleted the partition for C:, you then tried to format C:.
If this is correct, go back to Fdisk, delete the other partition, create new using large disk support, and all of the 30 Gig. Restart, then try format.
If this is what you are doing and still getting the error, something did not complete correctly with the first Fdisk attempt.

Once in Fdisk, choose option 4 and view the details of this drive. Let us know what that says and we can help better http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

EDIT: If you get a server error, highlight and copy your text. Then back out without reposting. Go all the way to the main page, refresh and see if your post took. if not, go back and paste back in and retry. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

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Quotes from "Lifes Little Instruction Book" by H.Jackson Brown: 65) Let people pull in front of you when you're stopped in traffic. Frank's Place (http://www.members.aol.com/frankscompsrvice)

[This message has been edited by bassman (edited 01-06-2002).]

Originally posted by bassman:
Lets see if this sounds correct:
You ran Fdisk, you deleted the partition for C:, you then tried to format C:.
If this is correct, go back to Fdisk, delete the other partition, create new using large disk support, and all of the 30 Gig. Restart, then try format.
If this is what you are doing and still getting the error, something did not complete correctly with the first Fdisk attempt.

Once in Fdisk, choose option 4 and view the details of this drive. Let us know what that says and we can help better http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

EDIT: If you get a server error, highlight and copy your text. Then back out without reposting. Go all the way to the main page, refresh and see if your post took. if not, go back and paste back in and retry. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif



I think that fixed my problem. I deleted the partition and rebooted. I can now read drive c:. I had previously formatted it, so do I need to reformat it now? When I try to read d it doesn't find it so does that mean it is gone and that it is all allocated to C:?

Originally posted by bassman:
Lets see if this sounds correct:
You ran Fdisk, you deleted the partition for C:, you then tried to format C:.
If this is correct, go back to Fdisk, delete the other partition, create new using large disk support, and all of the 30 Gig. Restart, then try format.
If this is what you are doing and still getting the error, something did not complete correctly with the first Fdisk attempt.

Once in Fdisk, choose option 4 and view the details of this drive. Let us know what that says and we can help better http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

EDIT: If you get a server error, highlight and copy your text. Then back out without reposting. Go all the way to the main page, refresh and see if your post took. if not, go back and paste back in and retry. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif



I removed partition and then rebooted and now i can read c. d is inaccessable so does that mean it is all allocated to c now? Do I still need to run FDISK? The drive was previously formatted so there is nothing on it. Thanks so much for all the help.

Originally posted by bassman:
Lets see if this sounds correct:
You ran Fdisk, you deleted the partition for C:, you then tried to format C:.
If this is correct, go back to Fdisk, delete the other partition, create new using large disk support, and all of the 30 Gig. Restart, then try format.
If this is what you are doing and still getting the error, something did not complete correctly with the first Fdisk attempt.

Once in Fdisk, choose option 4 and view the details of this drive. Let us know what that says and we can help better http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

EDIT: If you get a server error, highlight and copy your text. Then back out without reposting. Go all the way to the main page, refresh and see if your post took. if not, go back and paste back in and retry. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif



I removed partition and then rebooted and now i can read c. d is inaccessable so does that mean it is all allocated to c now? Do I still need to run FDISK? The drive was previously formatted so there is nothing on it. Thanks so much for all the help.

Originally posted by bassman:
Lets see if this sounds correct:
You ran Fdisk, you deleted the partition for C:, you then tried to format C:.
If this is correct, go back to Fdisk, delete the other partition, create new using large disk support, and all of the 30 Gig. Restart, then try format.
If this is what you are doing and still getting the error, something did not complete correctly with the first Fdisk attempt.

Once in Fdisk, choose option 4 and view the details of this drive. Let us know what that says and we can help better http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

EDIT: If you get a server error, highlight and copy your text. Then back out without reposting. Go all the way to the main page, refresh and see if your post took. if not, go back and paste back in and retry. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif



I removed partition and then rebooted and now i can read c. d is inaccessable so does that mean it is all allocated to c now? Do I still need to run FDISK? The drive was previously formatted so there is nothing on it. Thanks so much for all the help.

You will need to go to option 4 in Fdisk to see what you have. You would need to remove ALL existing partitions and repartition using all availabe space, in order to use this as a 30 Gig. It will not automaticly allocate unused space.
Look at the size of the partition that you can see. It should be in Mgb.
What you are ultimately looking for is 30,000 Mgb (30Gb)

It seems we are having a lot of server errors today. please only submit once and give it a chance to post. If you get the error, it does not mean it did not take (as you can see http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif )
Good luck, and be sure to follow up with whether this worked. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/cool.gif

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Quotes from "Lifes Little Instruction Book" by H.Jackson Brown: 65) Let people pull in front of you when you're stopped in traffic. Frank's Place (http://www.members.aol.com/frankscompsrvice)

Everytime I delete the partition it will let me read c. When i try to install the o/s it tells me it needs to be partitioned. When I partition c drive to the entire space and do option 4 in FDISK it tells me there are 29330 mgs on drive c. it then makes me reboot. when i reboot it is unable to read drive c again. It also told me I needed to format but it gives me the error format not supported. Can you give me the steps i need to follow in order to be able to install Windows ME to this drive all on 1 drive. When I do one thing it works, but will not install the o/s because it tells me it has to be partitioned. when I partition it tells me to reboot when I reboot it will either not read drive c or it tells me I don't have enough space to install windows.

You might want to read Microsoft's instructions for Fdisk and Format (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q255867#3) and start from the beginning with deleting all partitions and create a primary dos partition using 100% of the drive with large disk support. Be sure to set this partition active After you create this partition reboot and format the new partition. You might want to print the Microsoft instructions for reference during the process. I do have one question after you created your present partition did you set it as the active partition so that you could boot from it and install an operating system on it? If not this could be your only problem.

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I think Windows XP and Microsoft use more of my bandwidth than I do!

[This message has been edited by rond36 (edited 01-06-2002).]

AAAHHHHH, something I completely forgot. With some of the newer drives, you need to use the manufacturers utilities disk to get it ready for OS install.
Go to the manufacturers site and download the utility for your drive. Run their Fdisk and format utility and see how it goes.
I fought a Maxtor for 2 days before someone reminded me about this and it was a wizbang job after that http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif
Not sure about the others, but at Maxtor, you download a program to your HD, then make a setup disk with that.
Good luck. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/cool.gif

EDIT For ME, just insert the CD in the CD ROM, reboot and let it do it's thing. You will need to make sure to set BIOS to boot from CD.
The ME disk will do all the partitioning and formatting for you.

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Quotes from "Lifes Little Instruction Book" by H.Jackson Brown: 65) Let people pull in front of you when you're stopped in traffic. Frank's Place (http://www.members.aol.com/frankscompsrvice)

[This message has been edited by bassman (edited 01-06-2002).]