invalid partition table setup can not continue

IBM Thinkpag r31

This is a friends laptop. Bad shape. Had a mess of spyware, likely virus. Got my hands on the restore discs. Trying to reinstall from scratch and I get stopped with this error.

Any suggestions?

 

I'm guessing, seeing as how nobody else has offered anything....

But it sounds like something has stepped on the partition table for that drive. There are clever people with sector editors that know how to restore a munged partition table, but it's a lot easier just to grab your Startup Disk, run FDISK to delete all existing partitions on that drive, and set up a new partition. The only trouble with that approach is that whatever was on that drive goes to the Great Bit-Bucket in the Sky when you do that.

From there, you get to format the new partition for the filesystem of your choice, and re-install your O/S and application software or restore everything from backup. If you have one.

 

Im trying to reinstall the OS(Win something) from the restore disks but it craps out with this error. I do not have a 3.5 start up disk with fdisk on it. Where can i find something like that. thanks for your help.

 

Here:
http://www.bootdisk.com/
http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/
http://www.fdisk.com/home/