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#1 of 18 Posted Oct-7 10:24 PM

From Ronald McDonald Posts 32 Last Oct-11
To All [Msg # 136747.1 ]

Hi,

I took a 4 GB HDD divided into two 2 GB partitions, formatted in FAT. I installed the drive as CS onto my main Windows XP PC in order to format it and to restore a Ghost image onto the first partition (set as active). When I bring the drive (with jumper set as master) into an old IBM Pentium II PC, the drive refuse to boot via the MS-DOS 6.2 O.S..

I did the same process with another similar drive and it worked fine. I even tried to re-install DOS (same version) onto the buggy drive, but no luck. Finally, I used FDISK to removed the second partition (configured as primary). Even if only partition is present and it is set as active and primary, DOS onto it refuses to boot, leaving a totally blank screen past the IBM logo from the BIOS progress.

Regards,

Ronald

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#2 of 18 Posted Oct-7 10:49 PM

From John Barreiro Posts 45 Last Nov-10
To Ronald McDonald [Msg # 136747.2 136747.1 ]

First, any particular reason you formatted as FAT instead of NTFS if you're using WinXP?

Check this resource for XP formatting procedures:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348

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#3 of 18 Posted Oct-7 10:56 PM

From Ronald McDonald Posts 32 Last Oct-11
To John Barreiro [Msg # 136747.3 136747.2 ]

Hmmm, I'm not using Win XP, I'm using MS-DOS 6.2.

Ron

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#4 of 18 Posted Oct-7 11:04 PM

From John Barreiro Posts 45 Last Nov-10
To Ronald McDonald [Msg # 136747.4 136747.3 ]

Oh, in that case, did you make the partition "active"? (or bootable?)

Edited Oct-7 by John Barreiro

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#5 of 18 Posted Oct-7 11:25 PM

From Ronald McDonald Posts 32 Last Oct-11
To John Barreiro [Msg # 136747.5 136747.4 ]

yes

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#6 of 18 Posted Oct-8 1:37 AM

From John Barreiro Posts 45 Last Nov-10
To Ronald McDonald [Msg # 136747.6 136747.5 ]

Ok... out of ideas.

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#7 of 18 Posted Oct-8 2:04 AM

From Ronald McDonald Posts 32 Last Oct-11
To John Barreiro [Msg # 136747.7 136747.6 ]

Can the activation of the primary partition corrupt? Perhaps a low level format?

Ron

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#8 of 18 Posted Oct-8 9:50 AM

From John in Detroit Posts 508 Last Nov-21
To John Barreiro [Msg # 136747.8 136747.2 ]

Why FAT instead of NTFS

Why Vintage instead of Windows support?

He was trying to boot into DOS

DOS don't do NTFS (Though the dos emulator in NT will, but that is only because it's a program running under NT) got to have NT to use NTFS

Windows XP is, of course NT Version #.## (I forget the version number)

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#9 of 18 Posted Oct-8 9:56 AM

From Timothy J. McGowan Posts 319 Last Nov-10
To Ronald McDonald [Msg # 136747.9 136747.1 ]

Ronald:

Is your drive properly recognized in the Pentium II's BIOS?

-- Tim

McGowanReporting.com

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#10 of 18 Posted Oct-8 10:10 AM

From John Barreiro Posts 45 Last Nov-10
To Ronald McDonald [Msg # 136747.10 136747.7 ]

it's possible. Try FDISK to wipe all partitions and start again from scratch

Another possibility, what's the BIOS's HDD size limit?

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#11 of 18 Posted Oct-8 10:11 AM

From John Barreiro Posts 45 Last Nov-10
To John in Detroit [Msg # 136747.11 136747.8 ]

Thank you echo....

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#12 of 18 Posted Oct-8 10:17 AM

From Ronald McDonald Posts 32 Last Oct-11
To Timothy J. McGowan [Msg # 136747.12 136747.9 ]

Yes

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#13 of 18 Posted Oct-8 3:48 PM

From Charles C Posts 62 Last Nov-10
To Ronald McDonald [Msg # 136747.13 136747.3 ]

I wish I could help, Ron, but all I can do is commiserate.

I was successful in partitioning the drive (9.1 GB) on my old Dell 400 MHz Pentium II into two partitions and installing DOS 6.2 on one partition and Red Hat Linux on the second partition. Did you, by any chance make the first partition too big? I remember that as a wrinkle at the time I did it. I used Partition Magic at the time which would have been about 5 or 6 years ago.

...Charles

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#14 of 18 Posted Oct-8 4:24 PM

From Ronald McDonald Posts 32 Last Oct-11
To Charles C [Msg # 136747.14 136747.13 ]

Hello Charles,

Both partitions are 2011 MB in size. That drive used to boot. It's not a new drive nor new stuff on it.

Regards,

Ronald

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#15 of 18 Posted Oct-10 8:54 AM

From cupxwb Posts 21 Last Oct-10
To Ronald McDonald [Msg # 136747.15 136747.14 ]

How have you formatted the disk? Is it FAT16 or FAT32? DOS6.22 and DOS7/Win95 only recognize FAT16. Once you've reformatted, do a sys C: from the floppy - that puts on the bootable stuff. The rest of the installation is just a copy and expand operation.

If you want to use FAT32, you'll need DOS 8/Win 98.

To do that, do a normal Win98 install, then

attrib -sh msdos.sys
edit msdos.sys

Change BootGUI=1 to BootGUI=0

Save the file

attrib +s +h msdos.sys

Reboot and you've got DOS8.

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