jErikoATo

[slaps forehead, proceeds to wear brown paper bag over head in shame] This is what I get for trying to debug something on 2 hours of sleep. "I just changed the batteries before it broke," she said. I should have picked up on it, given that every digital camera blinks a light but then does nothing when the batteries are near dead. Thanks a lot. Sorry for wasting your time.

Tried that. I also tried turning the camera on while holding down various buttons (just in case).

Hi all I got my hands on a Hitachi point-and-shoot camera. During file transfer, someone wisely unplugged the camera's USB cable, and now the thing doesn't turn on. There doesn't seem to be much about this model (HDC-761E) anywhere online. I'd like to revive the thing, but I have no idea on how to get started. There might be some stuff I could load onto an SD card that would reset the firmware, or it might be possible to pop the thing open and connect some pins to reset it, but really I'm not even sure on how to approach this problem. Any ideas?

I think I should be able to make the hard disk active if I booted from a floppy. The problem is that the Win98 I'm using to format this hard drive is a laptop with a broken screen, so I can only see the top 1/5 of the screen. When I run windows, I hook it up to a TV since I don't have an actual monitor around. The thing is, without Windows running, the laptop isn't able to display stuff on a TV. I figure I would need to load some NeoMagic driver in MS-DOS to use the TV, and then load some USB drivers (this is USB 1.1, so I assume the drivers aren't loaded in MS-DOS) to connect to the messed up hard drive. The I could use fdisk to set the messed up hard drive to be active. Is this doable, and if so, how do I do it?

Out of curiosity, why would you want to do this? Even really cheap multi-region DVD players don't seem to have trouble with playing both PAL and NTSC

The problem seems to be that fdisk is not letting me set an active partition on a fixed disk other than fixed disk 1. I have the laptop's hard drive connected to another computer through USB, and when I try to set the new primary partition as an active partition, i get a message that tells me that an active partition can only be on fixed disk 1. How can I force fdisk to make another active partition?

You might want to try using an MSDOS boot floppy (or CD) and FDISKing the drive first. Delete all the partitions on it, create a new primary partition, format it to FAT16 in MSDOS and then try the install. Like I've said, I can't boot from a floppy or CD. I used fdisk on a Win98 to wipe the HDD and create a primary partition (FAT16). However, when I boot from this HDD, I get an "invalid partition table" message.

I was thinking of eventually putting some Linux on it. The problem right now is that the floppy drive is screwed, and the machine can't boot from the CD. I accidentally messed up the HDD, so I'm trying to get it back to a state where the machine can boot from it (I really don't care what it boots--Windows, Linux, MS-DOS, whatever. Would just be nice to get some life into it.).

I tried both a primary DOS partition and an extended partition. I also tried making a primary DOS partition of 500Mb in case a large partition was making something mess up. For both of the primary DOSs, I got the same "invalid partition table" error. I recall reading somewhere that for a FAT16 to be bootable, the first however many bits on the drive needed to be zeros (or something like that). Could this be the problem, and how would I fix it? Hak5Chris: I've never used Win95 on any network other than a direct cable link. It's always a great masochistic experience to delete the contents of win.ini, but that's not really exploiting anything...

I tried both a primary DOS partition and an extended partition. I also tried making a primary DOS partition of 500Mb in case a large partition was making something mess up. For both of the primary DOSs, I got the same "invalid partition table" error.

I got the old laptop hard drive back to FAT16 using fdisk, and I used "format /s x" to format it. I didn't change any of the system files on the hard drive just to see how the laptop would respond. I get an "invalid partition table" error message when I try to boot. I'm formatting this drive on a Win98, so I'm not sure why the Win95 doesn't like the partition table. How might I be able to fix this?

That's the article that got me thinking about this old laptop again. Thing is, that article doesn't actually give any helpful advice, particularly for my messed up systems.

This sounds like it could work. Thanks. What I'm running into is that the old laptop still isn't recognizing the hard drive. It's not even saying it can't boot from the drive. I think the issue is that even after formatting the drive, it's still FAT32, and Windows 98 (the computer i'm using to format) doesn't have the /FS:FAT option like Win 2000 and xp so i can't tell it to format into FAT16.

I'm not a normal guy; I don't have a "normal" computer. If this is hopeless, just tell me and I'll stop bugging you guys. I got rid of the HFS+ data fork on the hard drive, but the hard drive ended up in FAT32 (unusable to Windows 95). Now I'm trying to figure out how to get it back to FAT16...sigh

I've got a floppy lying around that I think is the laptop's CD driver so that it can install windows. I copied that floppy to the lappy's c drive, went through all the files, and changed all the file paths from a: to c:. When I try to boot off of the c drive, I still get an "Invalid system disk" error. I took a windows 98 bootable floppy and tried copying that to the laptop's c drive. I went through all the files, but didn't find any file paths pointing to a:, so I didn't have anything to change. I got the same error as above when I try to boot with it. The only other Windows I have access to is a Windows 98 sony Vaio with more quirks than Forest Gump (so a very non-standard system to begin with, and now almost unusable). So I can't really pop the Windows 95 laptop's HDD into another machine. When I first started messing with this hard drive, I was using a Mac to access it. Could the mac have stuck some sort of HFS+ fork onto the drive that is preventing the old laptop from booting from it? Since it's HFS+, Windows 98 would completely ignore any stuff the Mac added when I format the hard drive in Windows 98.

How do I do that?

It has a floppy that doesn't work. I popped the HDD out, hooked it to a Windows 98 (SE) through USB, and drag-dropped the contents of a bootable Win98 floppy to the HDD (making sure I was displaying hidden files). The laptop didn't recognize the HDD as a system disk. Is there a way I can get Win98 to make a disk connected through USB into a boot disk?

Possibly. If when windows requires the first restart, instead of letting it boot, place the hard drive in the laptop, might work. Do you mean the CD? It doesn't have drivers for the CD drive, so the BIOS doesn't even recognize it as (boot) device, even though the CD gets a quick spin when the laptop boots. Ever since I wiped the HDD, the laptop doesn't recognize it as a system disk. I'm trying to figure out what it would take to make the laptop think the hard drive is a system drive. I tried putting the contents of a bootable floppy on it, but that didn't fly.

That's a step in the right direction. I'll see if I can figure it out. Not much hope getting Windows on there then?

I'm trying to breathe some life into an old Windows 95 lappy. Back in the day it ran some old DOS games pretty well. Problem is, it can't boot off a CD-ROM, the floppy drive broke a number of years ago, and I wiped the hard drive while trying to do something :-?. Does anyone know how I can get a fresh copy of Windows 95 installed on it (I've got the CD)? I created a few images of the HDD before I wiped it, but putting them back on the HDD doesn't seem to be working. I've got access to a partially functional Windows 98 SE, but I've moved in the Mac direction, and I don't have any other Windows stuff lying around. I figure I'd need to stick something on the lappy HDD that it can boot off of and that has a CD-ROM driver so I can install Windows from the install CD. Any ideas?