Creating A Diagnostics Partition
in [Dell]
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From: dgrnyc@yahoo.com on 8 Aug 2005 10:39 I have a Dell Latitude D505 that has a 31 MB FAT diagnostics partition. It's part of the Primary partition area but separate from the C drive partition which is also on the primary partition area. I can press F12 when I start the computer to boot to the Diagnostics partition and run diagnostics tests. Very cool. I have Dell Inspiron 8600 that does not have this partition. Is there a way to add this diagnostics partition to the Inspiron 8600 either with or without erasing all the partitions on the hard drive? Currently, the Inspiron has a 60 GB hard drive with 3 partitions and some free space as follows: Windows Partition (C:) 14 GB NTFS Primary Partition Documents Partition (D:) 28 GB NTFS Extended Partition Drivers Partition (E:) 8 GB FAT32 Extended Partition Free Space 6 GB Extended Partition I am using Windows XP Pro English version with SP2. I also have Partition Magic 8. Using the Disk Management program in Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management I was able to create a 31 MB FAT partition on the Inspiron and not have any Drive letter associated with it (just as on the Latitude). But the partition on the Inspiron is different from the one on the Latitude. It is part of the extended partition area and not the primary partition area and I can't boot into it like I can on the Latitude. I'm not sure what to try from here. Thanks for any help or suggestions. Daniel
From: Ted Zieglar on 8 Aug 2005 10:48 Creating the diagnostic partition is not the problem, if you're familiar with partitioning software (Partition Magic, BootIt NG, etc.) or imaging software (e.g. True Image, Ghost). The problem is accessing the diagnostics partition from the F12 key. That requires some highly technical knowledge of programming, and is not guaranteed to work on every model of Dell computer. Ain't no easy way to do it. The easy way is to use Dell's diagnostic CD instead, which has all the same stuff you'll find in the diagnostic partition. -- Ted Zieglar "You can do it if you try." <dgrnyc(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1123511960.599927.277640(a)g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... > I have a Dell Latitude D505 that has a 31 MB FAT diagnostics partition. > It's part of the Primary partition area but separate from the C drive > partition which is also on the primary partition area. I can press F12 > when I start the computer to boot to the Diagnostics partition and run > diagnostics tests. Very cool. I have Dell Inspiron 8600 that does not > have this partition. > > Is there a way to add this diagnostics partition to the Inspiron 8600 > either with or without erasing all the partitions on the hard drive? > > Currently, the Inspiron has a 60 GB hard drive with 3 partitions and > some free space as follows: > Windows Partition (C:) 14 GB NTFS Primary Partition > Documents Partition (D:) 28 GB NTFS Extended Partition > Drivers Partition (E:) 8 GB FAT32 Extended Partition > Free Space 6 GB Extended Partition > > I am using Windows XP Pro English version with SP2. I also have > Partition Magic 8. > > Using the Disk Management program in Control Panel, Administrative > Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management I was able to create a 31 > MB FAT partition on the Inspiron and not have any Drive letter > associated with it (just as on the Latitude). But the partition on the > Inspiron is different from the one on the Latitude. It is part of the > extended partition area and not the primary partition area and I > can't boot into it like I can on the Latitude. I'm not sure what to > try from here. Thanks for any help or suggestions. Daniel >
From: S.Lewis on 8 Aug 2005 11:18 (***from an earlier post with thanks to dg1261 and ben_myers......) ----- Original Message ----- From: "dg1261" <dgREMOVE-THIS1261(a)cs.com> Newsgroups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2005 8:06 AM Subject: Re: How do you create the Dell diagnostic partition and load it up with the diagnostics? > > <ben_myers_spam_me_not @ charter.net (Ben Myers)> wrote: >> Thanks for the info. I'll follow the recipe for the next Dell I get >> needing a utility/diagnostic partition. It's pretty much as I had >> surmised after my recent not-quite-successful attempt at it. >> The diagnostic partition needs to be the first partition on the >> drive, i.e. created and loaded up before the main operating >> system partition (2000, XP, Linux or whatever) is created >> and loaded??? ... Ben > > It depends on whether or not you intend to try restoring that silly > seal.exe > function. I don't know why anyone would want to restore seal.exe (all it > does is show the Dell EULA and service tag one time only and never again), > but if you do, then it seems to place additional requirements on the diag > partition: it must be the first partition on the disk, must be the first > listed in the partition table, and seems to be restricted to a particular > OS > (though I haven't yet determined if it's an ordinary Win95 version of DOS > or > includes custom Dell changes). > > If you don't need seal.exe, then it doesn't matter whether the diag > partition is created first or not. It can be done before or after loading > the main OS, and be anywhere on the disk. For anyone interested, here's a > quick step-by-step of how I did it; if you're familiar working in DOS, you > should be able to read between the lines and figure out how you'd do it: > > (1) Use PartitionMagic to create a FAT16 partition anywhere on the disk, > any desired size. It doesn't seem to matter what FAT16 flavor it is > (0x04, > 0x06, or 0x0E). I made the partition active so I could get at it as drive > C: in the next steps. > > (2) Reboot from a Win98 boot floppy (DOS 7.1), then format c:, then sys > c:. > > (3) Copy all the diagnostic files from the resource CD (the A1236 > directory > on my Dimension 4600 CD), or get them from the download file from the Dell > site, or get them from the A1246 'update' download. Dell dumps them all > in > the root directory, but I preferred to group them together in a > c:\delldiag > directory. > > (4) Find any common reboot utility (reboot.com, reset.com, warmboot.exe, > dellboot.exe, to name a few) and copy it to c:. > > (5) Create a config.sys and autoexec.bat that launches > c:\delldiag\delldiag.exe, and finishes with reboot.com. (For the purists, > I > can tell you what Dell puts in those files, though it really isn't that > critical.) > > (6) Use the freeware ptedit.exe or similar partition table editor, change > partition type to 0xDE, and switch the active partition flag to the main > OS > partition. > > That's it. The diagnostic partition now works just like it was designed > to. > The only glitch I ran into was in step 2, where 'sys c:' installed a > mostly > blank msdos.sys file. This resulted in squirrely screen colors until I > padded it out. > > I subsequently went back in and customized step 5, adding my own utilities > and creating a DOS text menu to choose among them. Now I can also run my > own utilities from the Dell utility partition. > >
From: ben_myers_spam_me_not @ on 8 Aug 2005 11:40 Let me emphasize that if the Inspiron 8600 did not have a diagnostics partition originally, then the BIOS probably would not allow access to it, should you create one and load it up with the current Dell diagnostics. I have run into similar issues with other, usually older, Dell notebooks. So make sure the BIOS can handle booting to the diagnostic partition before going through the considerable work of setting one up. As an alternative, may I suggest a bootable CD with Dell diagnostics on it? .... Ben Myers On 8 Aug 2005 07:39:20 -0700, "dgrnyc(a)yahoo.com" <dgrnyc(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >I have a Dell Latitude D505 that has a 31 MB FAT diagnostics partition. >It's part of the Primary partition area but separate from the C drive >partition which is also on the primary partition area. I can press F12 >when I start the computer to boot to the Diagnostics partition and run >diagnostics tests. Very cool. I have Dell Inspiron 8600 that does not >have this partition. > >Is there a way to add this diagnostics partition to the Inspiron 8600 >either with or without erasing all the partitions on the hard drive? > >Currently, the Inspiron has a 60 GB hard drive with 3 partitions and >some free space as follows: >Windows Partition (C:) 14 GB NTFS Primary Partition >Documents Partition (D:) 28 GB NTFS Extended Partition >Drivers Partition (E:) 8 GB FAT32 Extended Partition >Free Space 6 GB Extended Partition > >I am using Windows XP Pro English version with SP2. I also have >Partition Magic 8. > >Using the Disk Management program in Control Panel, Administrative >Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management I was able to create a 31 >MB FAT partition on the Inspiron and not have any Drive letter >associated with it (just as on the Latitude). But the partition on the >Inspiron is different from the one on the Latitude. It is part of the >extended partition area and not the primary partition area and I >can't boot into it like I can on the Latitude. I'm not sure what to >try from here. Thanks for any help or suggestions. Daniel >
From: Fixer on 8 Aug 2005 13:13 You can actually download this Dell diags software and run it from a floppy disk in DOS they also do a windows version "Ted Zieglar" <teddyz(a)notmail.com> wrote in message news:lgKJe.12$CG1.394404(a)news.sisna.com... Creating the diagnostic partition is not the problem, if you're familiar with partitioning software (Partition Magic, BootIt NG, etc.) or imaging software (e.g. True Image, Ghost). The problem is accessing the diagnostics partition from the F12 key. That requires some highly technical knowledge of programming, and is not guaranteed to work on every model of Dell computer. Ain't no easy way to do it. The easy way is to use Dell's diagnostic CD instead, which has all the same stuff you'll find in the diagnostic partition. -- Ted Zieglar "You can do it if you try." <dgrnyc(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1123511960.599927.277640(a)g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... > I have a Dell Latitude D505 that has a 31 MB FAT diagnostics partition. > It's part of the Primary partition area but separate from the C drive > partition which is also on the primary partition area. I can press F12 > when I start the computer to boot to the Diagnostics partition and run > diagnostics tests. Very cool. I have Dell Inspiron 8600 that does not > have this partition. > > Is there a way to add this diagnostics partition to the Inspiron 8600 > either with or without erasing all the partitions on the hard drive? > > Currently, the Inspiron has a 60 GB hard drive with 3 partitions and > some free space as follows: > Windows Partition (C:) 14 GB NTFS Primary Partition > Documents Partition (D:) 28 GB NTFS Extended Partition > Drivers Partition (E:) 8 GB FAT32 Extended Partition > Free Space 6 GB Extended Partition > > I am using Windows XP Pro English version with SP2. I also have > Partition Magic 8. > > Using the Disk Management program in Control Panel, Administrative > Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management I was able to create a 31 > MB FAT partition on the Inspiron and not have any Drive letter > associated with it (just as on the Latitude). But the partition on the > Inspiron is different from the one on the Latitude. It is part of the > extended partition area and not the primary partition area and I > can't boot into it like I can on the Latitude. I'm not sure what to > try from here. Thanks for any help or suggestions. Daniel >
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