HD doesn't show up in DOS

[Zelig]

I was at my grandfather's and decided his computer needed some maintenance run on it, including reinstalling Windows 98se.

His computer has two hard drives, his C is 19 GB and has most of his stuff and the D is 1.18 GB and has his old stuff that he kept from his previous computer. Both hard drives are detected properly in the BIOS and work fine in Windows.

The problem is that when I go to DOS, his C drive is the small hard drive and his D drive goes to to the CDROM, so I can't get to the larger hard drive.

Any ideas?

 

[BlueMonday]

I've noticed similar dos things when I go to reformat. Like my CDrom some how goes from F to G, and all the others get switched around too. Start plunking letters down, it should be there. It might be changed to E or F or maybe even B.

 

[Zelig]

B is his 5 1/2 floppy drive which he insists on keeping.
I went all the way to Z, and no sign of the bigger drive.

 

[starlifter]

What version of DOS are you using?

It sounds like the 2.1 GB barrier and/or the DOS you are using does not recognize FAT32.

Anytime I plan on using DOS, I have use 2.1 GB partitions and smaller. When the OS will not recognize a disk, it will skip it and the next one will take it's place. The shift in drive letters is happening exactly as it should.... nothing at all wrong with that.

If you are booting into win 98's DOS, it should work.

 

[BlueMonday]

Originally posted by Zelig
B is his 5 1/2 floppy drive which he insists on keeping.

Wow, I didn't think anyone had those anymore.

...Old people and computers . My father kept nearly 1000 floppies (both 3.25 and 5.5) sitting around on a shelf for ages. I think he only used one or two every now and then. One day I said, "Hey, I could take every one of those and put them on a couple CD-Rs, then you'd have all that extra shelf space..."

"No." he said. And that was it.

He used to make me so damn mad!

 

[omichyron]

What version of Windows made the boot disk you are using? Just out of curiosity, does the fdisk utility show the other partition? Try using a Windows 98 boot disk, if you aren't already. Additionally, sometimes reinstalling Windows 98 on top of the previous installation will correct the problems with the OS, but this doesn't always work....

 

[starlifter]

All of this stuff is easy to see with Partition Magic. The drive letter shifting is based on the physical drive connections, the Primary partitions, and the Logical partitions, plus the "hidden" partitions. I routinely keep some partitons hidden, in order to make letters work out when booted in different OSs.

I suggest using Partition Magic 7.xx to look at things graphically, unless you have solid knowledge of how the boot process works. PM makes it easy, but with study, you can do it without. FDisk does not help much... you must still understand how everything works, unless you have a program that can spoon-feed it like PM7. I doubt anything is wrong, unless you have encounted some of the decades-old problems in MS's FDisk.

 

[Zelig]

I might get partition magic later- his internet is blazingly SLOW.

I found that both drives are recognized when I boot to DOS of the hard drive, but when I boot off the boot disk or the win98 cd the hard drive is not there.

Also, how do you get the CDrom drive working when booting into DOS off the boot disk or the hard drive?

I got around the problems by:
1)booting of hard drive to DOS, and deleting windows
2)booting of the startup disk with CD support and copying the win98 install files to the small harddrive
3)booting of the hard drive and installing windows from the small hard drive to the large hard drive.

Even though I got everything worked out it would be nice to figure out why the HD wasn't working and how to get the CDrom drive working.

 

[Chieftess]

5 1/2 inch floopies... Must be an old-school thing. I still have mine...

 

[starlifter]

Zelig, it is a 2-step process to get a CDROM to work under DOS.

You need the device driver installed in config.sys, and mscdex in either the config.sys or the autoexec.bat.


Zip and post your config.sys and autoexec.bat.

Also, go to the dos prompt in each instance and type "ver", hit Enter, and post exactly waht your version is.


You likely have mixed certain files from different DOS versions. Sometimes you can get info about an executable or DLL by right clicking on it in Windows. The date stamp also reveals the DOS version, if it has not been altered.

 

[Zelig]

Ok, I installed mscdex (2.95) into the autoexec, but it says that it is already started.
Drivers for the cdrom... there don't appear to be any. Windows reports that no files are required or have been loaded.

Typing ver gives me what version of windows I have.

The date stamp is 23/04/99 on most of my DOS files.

 

[starlifter]

I looked at your files. The config.sys has no device driver for a CD ROM, so DOS will not know about your CD ROM. You must install one for pure DOS.


Here is the actual config.sys I use. I am not booting into DOS, so most comments are REM'd out. If I was booting into DOS, and wanted a CDROM, then I would have to install the driver. I have various hardware, which is why I have several CD ROM options at the end.

See if you have a file called ATAPI.SYS on your machine, and install it if your are booting with real DOS. Note that I am not talking about DOS windows, but real DOS. Your CDROM maker should have provided one, or it will have one at it's website.

If you run a pure DOS environment, you should optimize your memory, and put DOS high, and into Upper Memory Blocks (UMB). Naturally, you need himem.sys to do this. I also use emm386.

DEVICE=C:\essolo.sys /s:1969125D


rem  The rest of this Config.sys file is not necessary for Win95
rem  Anything used in it generally makes the system run slower

rem DEVICE=C:\WIN95\HIMEM.SYS /V
rem BUFFERS=40
rem FILES=60
rem dos=high,UMB
rem BREAK=ON

SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM C:\ /e:2048 /p

rem  set clean=P
rem  This Turns Off 2 Sec Delay @ MSDOS
switches= /f

rem  DEVICEhigh=C:\WIN95\EMM386.EXE NOEMS VERBOSE

rem ---------------------- MTM ATAPI CD-ROM ---------------------------------
rem ---  Need this ONLY if BIOS on M/B does not recognize ATAPI CD ROMs -----
rem    DEVICEhigh=C:\b\mtm\MTMCDAI.SYS /D:MTMIDE01
rem    DEVICE=C:\WinPgms\mmedia\sb16\DRV\SBIDE.SYS /D:MSCD001  /P:1e8,12
rem ---------------------- Add-On ATAPI CD-ROM ------------------------------
rem   devicehigh=f:\dos\utils\cdrom\atapicdm.sys /b

 

[Zelig]

Thanks for the information, I finally got his computer all fixed up after a BIOS upgrade.