Acer TravelMate 2300 - FAT only???

I was given an Acer TravelMate 2300 by someone who has a new one. It came with no guarantees and no recovery CD. It had working verison of XP Pro on it through SP2. I applied SP3 and several updates. It worked good until... I noticed that the C drive was formatted FAT32. So I thought it a good idea to move it to NTFS. Without checking, I fired in "convert c: /fs:ntfs". It rebooted and after a brief look at the Windows XP splash, it goes straight to a stop code x0000024 BSOD. There was nothing on the drive except for the OS so I was felt OK withjust reinstalling from my media.

I dragged out my copy of XP pro slipstreamed with SP2. Booted from CD, went through XP's native setup and detected an "unknown" partition where C used to be. I must've really slammed it. I chose to install to the unknown partition and XP offered to format it NTFS. I chose the thorough format option but it goes only to 24% and stops. The display still shows the progress bar, blue background etc. at 24%.

Since I don't have much experience with laptops, let me ask, is it possible that this laptop/drive ONLY formats to FAT or FAT32 and won't take an NTFS volume? If it will, are there any ideas out there how to apply and NTFS format so I can get this cute little laptop back to a usable state?

Thanks folks. Great forum, BTW!!

 

How about you delete the partition and make a new one and format to ntfs.

There is no FAT limitation on laptop hard drives.

You wouldn't by chance know the model of the hard drive, would you? Or the company that made it?

 

Well, I just wanted to confirm there wasn't something particular to the Acer TravelMate series.

As far as taking it apart, I haven't gone there yet. I might have to pull it all apart to see what the drive mfr is. It is a 60 gB drive. It had three partitions on it.
1) EISA utilities (2-3 mB I believe)
2) Primary partition - boot ~27 gB wide
3) Data partition - data ~ 27 gB wide
So you can see what they did: Just split the drive in two. We've all done that before. Why they did FAT instead of NTFS? Who knows.

#3 had zero data. #2 had the usual Docs & Settings structure plus "systemroot%" and subfolders for the Admin acct. No users - it had been stripped back to bare metal. It did boot and was pretty peppy actually. I was thrilled. Then I went and tinkered with it..,.. Argh!

I will go and delete #1-#2-#3 and try again. I was just hoping to not have to go through this but ...


Instant update! Hey it just bumped up to 25%!!! Maybe it IS going to work. At this rate, though, I'll be in the nursing home by the time it finishes. This is pretty slow but may be a direct result of how it got creamed with my "convert" command. I'll let it run overnight and see where it is tomorrow.

Thanks.

 

Just try delete only #2 or #2 and #3, I would try to avoid deleting the EISA utilities if possible.

 

I kept going on partition #2 and #3. Deleted both and started fresh again.

Well, I wonder if I should stop it now. It's only moved to 31% overnight - about 7 hours. The HDD activity light is solid on, none of the usual "blinking" that occurs. I think it's hung up but I didn't want to call a halt.

Could you or someone else please suggest another formatting route for this thing?

 

Bleh. Maybe you could try a low level format.

 

This sound like a bad HDD. My brother bought a desktop recently and when he tried to format and install windows the format process was going REALLY slow, like 10% per 24h! We tried to delete and recreate partitions and nothing helped. So he sent it back to the store(which have their own dedicated support crew) and as it turned out it the HDD was defective.


Edit: Low level format must always be the last resort, when you're left without any other option. If you decide to go that road though I suggest you use your specific HDD manufacturer tools and not some third-party tools. For example, if your HDD is Fujitsu, go to the Fujitsu website and get their own diagnostic/formatting tools.
Some useful info and links:
http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/low-level-format.html

 

Formatted! And, installed XP too!

What I had to do was stop the pain (stuck at 31%). Go back in with the install media and when set up comes up. Delete "Unknown" and #3. Comes back with 56 gB unformatted. Hit "C" to create the partition first, then install. What I wasn't doing was C-ing first. With this media disk, if you install, it calls for formatting first, which fails. Creating partition first (on this hardware) then install can happen easily. Duh!

Now, another question: Where is the disk or disk image on here for the motherboard disk for a TravelMate 2300? ​

There's more to do...

Thank you all for handholding...

 

Hi again. I've gotten the complete driverset from the Acer site. 'Twas super easy. Now I have one more question:

Does any one know how to lay out a driver disk/CD for the Acer? IOW, I have 12 ZIPs sitting in a folder on another computer for burning. I know I have to unzip everything. If I want to burn a driver only CD, how do I layout the structure for it? Do I put the Audio Drivers for example in their own folder, then put the 3-card Reader drivers in another, and so on, on the the CD or do I just cram all the ZIPs into the root (which you can't do because each driverset has a "w2k" folder and an "xp" folder). Another way of asking is: How do you assemble the .ISO to achieve the driver CD that normally would have come with the purchase of the '2300.

Maybe this question goes elsewhere too, so pardon me if I should start another thread.

Thanks.

H