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Re: [PLUG] Cross-platform hardware problem
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On Mon, 16 Jun 2003 17:34:24 -0400, George Langford, Sc.D. wrote:
>Hello Linux Users:
Speak for yourself! :)
>
>My Ak-74EC computer is giving me fits. During a memory upgrade,
>I inadvertently ran the PC first with both HD's powered up and then
>with just one. I saved the System.ini file twice, once with each
>of the above conditions. As a result I ended up with the drive
>letters swapped between C: and D: as described at this long-winded
>URL:
>
>>http://www.experts-
>>exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Win98/Q_20642131.html
Ok, I followed most of that. After a while my brain cramped, but I
don't think I missed anything essential.
Somebody reminded you to pull the extra memory before attempting to
re-install Win98. The problem with reading history like that is you
end up screaming, "DID YOU REMEMBER TO TAKE OUT THE EXTRA RAM?!?!"
while you're catching up... it's too late to say anything. :/
I was gonna ask: since adding the extra RAM started this, did you
consider punting back to 256 meg to see what would happen?
And if you're planning on running more than Win98 can handle, I
suggest you simply stick with something other than Win98.
OK. I said I'd talk about this off-list, been busy, and what the
heck... I'm gonna abuse these Linux guys for a few minutes. Here are
a few bits of information that might or might not have been mentioned
in that long message stream. Figure I'll throw more info at you;
either it'll spark something, and you'll find the solution, or your
brain will explode. Either way, problem solved. :)
Your problem notwithstanding: Generally, DOS assigns letters a
certain way. DOS in this case also means Windows 3, 95, 98, and (I
presume) ME. First it looks for primary partitions in the drives; it
looks at the master on the primary bus, then the slave on the primary
bus, master on the secondary bus, and slave on the secondary bus.
Every time it encounters a primary DOS partition, it assigns the next
letter. Then it starts looking at logical drives in the extended
partitions. Inside each extended partition there may be one or more
logical drives listed. It goes through each drive in the order
specified before, and assigns drive letters to each of the logical
drives inside the extended partition. Again, it does this for each
drive, in the same order as before, except that this time, it
finishes assigning letters to ALL the logical drives on each physical
drive before it goes on to the next physical drive.
So... if you change drives' positions in the search order, you can
change the drive designation. If you, say, add a second hard drive
with a primary partition, and the first hard drive had a primary and
an extended partition, next time you boot, DOS will assign drive D:
to the new drive's primary partition, and the first drive's secondary
partition will now be called drive E:. (You can get around this by
putting only an extended partition onto the second drive.)
When you first mentioned this problem, I'd guessed that you'd added a
new drive or swapped a cable or something. Sounds like that's not
what happened, but all that stuff might be good to know.
OK. Windows.
Windows sucks. Ask anybody here. I'm going to tell you one of my pet
peeves about Windows 9x.
If you have drive space, and a Windows system with problems, it would
make sense to install a fresh copy of Windows in a separate
partition. When you do that, one of two things will happen:
1) Windows will detect the old installation, bitch that it's not
allowed to update, and quit. (At which point I scream, "BUT I WASN'T
TRYING TO UPGRADE, DAMMIT!")
2) Windows will detect the old installation. At that point it will
give you two choices:
a) Install over your old Windows installation, preserving the
settings.
b) Perform a fresh installation in a different directory.
OK. Chances are, if you pick a), it will replace everything in the
old Windows installation EXCEPT WHATEVER IS BROKEN. Don't even THINK
that it will replace a corrupted driver.
I swear.
If you sensibly choose the second option, Windows will very carefully
do a fresh install in a new directory, and then WILL COPY ALL YOUR
BORKED SETTINGS FROM THE OLD INSTALL AND USE THEM IN THE NEW INSTALL.
Swear to God.
If you have an old copy of Windows, if you ever had an old copy of
Windows (God help you if you run fdisk to remove a partition,
figuring to force Windows to create a new one and format it clean --
nope, it'll detect the old one!), if you ever had a hard drive that
USED to have Windows on it, if your mother's foreign cousin's gay
boyfriend's roommate's CAT ever THOUGHT about buying a computer with
Windows on it, it will somehow track it down and use the settings
that cat would have used.
OK, I won't swear to that one.
I think the solution is to rename the Windows directory to something
else and then mung your msdos.sys file. I think you have to un-system
it, un-hide it, and either rename it to something entirely
unrecognizable, or write garbage over it, or something. I forget. But
you have to convince Windows that there is no old Windows
installation, or it will INSIST on using the settings from the old
Windows (or refuse to upgrade, depending).
Upgrading to a newer version of Windows sometimes fixes problems, but
it's problematical.
I saw a question on that web site that I never saw you answer. Do you
have any kind of boot extension? Something like MaxBlast that allows
you to run a larger drive than the BIOS was designed for? Eradicating
one of those without using the installer can be worse than getting
rid of fleas. Or spam.
Have you tried installing Windows on one of those 3g drives all by
itself? Leave all the other drives off the system, put it in the
first available drive position, and do a Windows install. By trying
to install Windows on that as a secondary drive, with another older
Windows bootable drive present as primary, you're asking for trouble.
fdisk shouldn't hang! fdisk hanging means trouble.
Try reducing the complexity of your problem: one drive at a time.
Test. Another drive. Have you moved any drives? Changed any jumpers?
Changed any cables? Does your BIOS detect all the drives in the
proper positions when it boots?
If DOS finds two primary partitions when it boots, both active, on
separate drives, it will use the first one (see the search order
mentioned before). Generally, you'll have the first drive in the
search order have the OS, boot track, and active partition. I don't
know what will happen if you mix those up. Older BIOSes insisted on
booting off the primary master, but these days the BIOSes are
smarter. Which means more opportunities for fux0ring up.
The fact that you mentioned Linux calling a drive HDD2 suggests to me
that you have it set up as the master on the secondary IDE bus (I
would expect them to be HDD0 - HDD3, assigned in the same order as
describe previously). Check that. Not knowing the addresses of your
bits and pieces of hardware can cause you grief.
Can't think of anything else right now, and supper's ready, so I
guess I'll stop abusing these poor enlightened Linux guys. :)
_________________________________________________________________________
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