ez-bios and hard drives
hello, folks =)
i have a somewhat complicated situation which someone perhaps can help me with :) in the near future i will be purchasing a new computer. i currently have an older model computer which is serving the purpose fine for me, but soon will (hopefully) be a backup computer. i have two hard drives on my system: a 13GB and a 2GB. The 13GB is the master C: and the 2GB is the slave D:. my bios is fairly old, so it has an 8GB limitation on it (i contacted the manufacturer of my bios to see if they have an upgrade and if it addresses larger disk drives). anyway, i installed ez-bios (from western digital) and it allowed full access to both drives with no problem. :) here's my issue: recently, my floppy drive went kaplooey (i tried a new drive, new connection, etc., with no luck, so i assume it's a bad controller on the motherboard). at some point i'd like to repartition my drives and reinstall windows 98 on it once it is my secondary computer. however ... the floppy drive does not work, which is causing issues. i really don't use the floppy for anything but would need it to boot up and run diagnostics and/or start from scratch. so, i'm trying to figure out a way to be able to get away without using my floppy at all and boot from the cd drive (if necessary). even though my bios is old, it does allow booting from a cd. however, since my master hard drive uses ez-bios, booting from the cd drive does not work (for grins, i tried booting through ez-bios with a cd in the drive to see if it might think the cd drive was A:, but it didn't work, lol). my question(s) is this: is there some way to start from scratch on my system without having access to the floppy drive? what i thought might work in theory is switching the 2GB as the master and the 13GB as the slave. that way, ez-bios would not be needed to recognize my master, and this would allow the cd drive to be bootable, no? in other words, there would be no need to see the slave drive while booting, so since the master drive would not need ez-bios, i could boot directly off the cd. is any of this possible, and if so, how would i do it? to sum things up, i want to be able to reformat and set up my computer without using the floppy drive and having ez-bios set up for the large drive (moved to the slave). thank you! scott :) |
EZ-BIOS will not interfere with booting to CD. If you have a proper
bootable CD and if the BIOS supports the option, just make the change to BIOS settings, insert the CD, and reboot. Of course, you wont be able to read the C: drive. If you have the right sort of utilities then you could erase and rebuild it from DOS, but it seems that you'll have to reinstall EZ-BIOS in order to use more than 8Gb, and you're right back where you started. If you want to re-install W98 you can simply delete the existing installation and re-install. Just skip the part about partitioning and re-formatting. Changing the drives around won't accomplish anything, as EZ-BIOS will still need to be active in order to see the 13Gb drive, whether it's master or slave, and you've already demonstrated that you can't boot from CD and have EZ-BIOS active. By far the simplest solution is to buy a new floppy drive. Another option is to limit the 13Gb drive to 8Gb and don't install EZ-BIOS. -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) "SS" wrote in message ... hello, folks =) i have a somewhat complicated situation which someone perhaps can help me with :) in the near future i will be purchasing a new computer. i currently have an older model computer which is serving the purpose fine for me, but soon will (hopefully) be a backup computer. i have two hard drives on my system: a 13GB and a 2GB. The 13GB is the master C: and the 2GB is the slave D:. my bios is fairly old, so it has an 8GB limitation on it (i contacted the manufacturer of my bios to see if they have an upgrade and if it addresses larger disk drives). anyway, i installed ez-bios (from western digital) and it allowed full access to both drives with no problem. :) here's my issue: recently, my floppy drive went kaplooey (i tried a new drive, new connection, etc., with no luck, so i assume it's a bad controller on the motherboard). at some point i'd like to repartition my drives and reinstall windows 98 on it once it is my secondary computer. however ... the floppy drive does not work, which is causing issues. i really don't use the floppy for anything but would need it to boot up and run diagnostics and/or start from scratch. so, i'm trying to figure out a way to be able to get away without using my floppy at all and boot from the cd drive (if necessary). even though my bios is old, it does allow booting from a cd. however, since my master hard drive uses ez-bios, booting from the cd drive does not work (for grins, i tried booting through ez-bios with a cd in the drive to see if it might think the cd drive was A:, but it didn't work, lol). my question(s) is this: is there some way to start from scratch on my system without having access to the floppy drive? what i thought might work in theory is switching the 2GB as the master and the 13GB as the slave. that way, ez-bios would not be needed to recognize my master, and this would allow the cd drive to be bootable, no? in other words, there would be no need to see the slave drive while booting, so since the master drive would not need ez-bios, i could boot directly off the cd. is any of this possible, and if so, how would i do it? to sum things up, i want to be able to reformat and set up my computer without using the floppy drive and having ez-bios set up for the large drive (moved to the slave). thank you! scott :) |
"SS" wrote in message ... i have a somewhat complicated situation which someone perhaps can help me with :) here's my issue: recently, my floppy drive went kaplooey (i tried a new drive, new connection, etc., with no luck, so i assume it's a bad controller on the motherboard I seriously doubt that. I would first ask "Are you POSITIVE that you connected the floppy drive cable properly, at both ends? Red stripe to Pin #1 on the motherboard. Red stripe to Pin #1 on the drive. The cable twist closest to the drive, not to the motherboard? The connectors properly seated? No chance of 2 bad cables in a row? If you eliminate all of those things, then I would just pop around to my local corner mom-and-pop bar/grill/car wash/delicatessen and computer repair shop, and buy an el cheapo brand IO card. Hook the floppy to that and you should be good to go. |
You indicated that you CANNOT boot from a floppy or CD. Then you need some
other boot device as fdisk and format will not work on a partition that it sources from. "SS" wrote in message ... hello, folks =) i have a somewhat complicated situation which someone perhaps can help me with :) in the near future i will be purchasing a new computer. i currently have an older model computer which is serving the purpose fine for me, but soon will (hopefully) be a backup computer. i have two hard drives on my system: a 13GB and a 2GB. The 13GB is the master C: and the 2GB is the slave D:. my bios is fairly old, so it has an 8GB limitation on it (i contacted the manufacturer of my bios to see if they have an upgrade and if it addresses larger disk drives). anyway, i installed ez-bios (from western digital) and it allowed full access to both drives with no problem. :) here's my issue: recently, my floppy drive went kaplooey (i tried a new drive, new connection, etc., with no luck, so i assume it's a bad controller on the motherboard). at some point i'd like to repartition my drives and reinstall windows 98 on it once it is my secondary computer. however ... the floppy drive does not work, which is causing issues. i really don't use the floppy for anything but would need it to boot up and run diagnostics and/or start from scratch. so, i'm trying to figure out a way to be able to get away without using my floppy at all and boot from the cd drive (if necessary). even though my bios is old, it does allow booting from a cd. however, since my master hard drive uses ez-bios, booting from the cd drive does not work (for grins, i tried booting through ez-bios with a cd in the drive to see if it might think the cd drive was A:, but it didn't work, lol). my question(s) is this: is there some way to start from scratch on my system without having access to the floppy drive? what i thought might work in theory is switching the 2GB as the master and the 13GB as the slave. that way, ez-bios would not be needed to recognize my master, and this would allow the cd drive to be bootable, no? in other words, there would be no need to see the slave drive while booting, so since the master drive would not need ez-bios, i could boot directly off the cd. is any of this possible, and if so, how would i do it? to sum things up, i want to be able to reformat and set up my computer without using the floppy drive and having ez-bios set up for the large drive (moved to the slave). thank you! scott :) |
Howdy :) Thanks for writing!
Since my floppy does not function right now, I can't boot off of that. I can boot off of a CD, but since EZ-BIOS is installed, when I boot off a CD it doesn't allow the EZ-BIOS to load first, so I can only see my slave drive. "Lil' Dave" wrote in message ... You indicated that you CANNOT boot from a floppy or CD. Then you need some other boot device as fdisk and format will not work on a partition that it sources from. "SS" wrote in message ... hello, folks =) i have a somewhat complicated situation which someone perhaps can help me with :) in the near future i will be purchasing a new computer. i currently have an older model computer which is serving the purpose fine for me, but soon will (hopefully) be a backup computer. i have two hard drives on my system: a 13GB and a 2GB. The 13GB is the master C: and the 2GB is the slave D:. my bios is fairly old, so it has an 8GB limitation on it (i contacted the manufacturer of my bios to see if they have an upgrade and if it addresses larger disk drives). anyway, i installed ez-bios (from western digital) and it allowed full access to both drives with no problem. :) here's my issue: recently, my floppy drive went kaplooey (i tried a new drive, new connection, etc., with no luck, so i assume it's a bad controller on the motherboard). at some point i'd like to repartition my drives and reinstall windows 98 on it once it is my secondary computer. however ... the floppy drive does not work, which is causing issues. i really don't use the floppy for anything but would need it to boot up and run diagnostics and/or start from scratch. so, i'm trying to figure out a way to be able to get away without using my floppy at all and boot from the cd drive (if necessary). even though my bios is old, it does allow booting from a cd. however, since my master hard drive uses ez-bios, booting from the cd drive does not work (for grins, i tried booting through ez-bios with a cd in the drive to see if it might think the cd drive was A:, but it didn't work, lol). my question(s) is this: is there some way to start from scratch on my system without having access to the floppy drive? what i thought might work in theory is switching the 2GB as the master and the 13GB as the slave. that way, ez-bios would not be needed to recognize my master, and this would allow the cd drive to be bootable, no? in other words, there would be no need to see the slave drive while booting, so since the master drive would not need ez-bios, i could boot directly off the cd. is any of this possible, and if so, how would i do it? to sum things up, i want to be able to reformat and set up my computer without using the floppy drive and having ez-bios set up for the large drive (moved to the slave). thank you! scott :) |
Howdy! Thanks for writing :)
"Hugh Candlin" wrote in message ... "SS" wrote in message ... i have a somewhat complicated situation which someone perhaps can help me with :) here's my issue: recently, my floppy drive went kaplooey (i tried a new drive, new connection, etc., with no luck, so i assume it's a bad controller on the motherboard I seriously doubt that. I would first ask "Are you POSITIVE that you connected the floppy drive cable properly, at both ends? Red stripe to Pin #1 on the motherboard. Red stripe to Pin #1 on the drive. The cable twist closest to the drive, not to the motherboard? The connectors properly seated? No chance of 2 bad cables in a row? I tried various connections with no luck. The new cable I got is in fact a new cable, so I assume it's ok. The weird thing is that my original floppy drive started not reading disks properly. So, I got a cheapy floppy drive off of eBay and it worked fine for about 2 days. Then, it acted just like the other one. It can format a disk, and then soon after it can't read that disk or any other. Not a clue what the problem could be. :( If you eliminate all of those things, then I would just pop around to my local corner mom-and-pop bar/grill/car wash/delicatessen and computer repair shop, and buy an el cheapo brand IO card. Hook the floppy to that and you should be good to go. I may try that =) |
Howdy! Thanks for writing :)
"Jeff Richards" wrote in message ... EZ-BIOS will not interfere with booting to CD. If you have a proper bootable CD and if the BIOS supports the option, just make the change to BIOS settings, insert the CD, and reboot. Of course, you wont be able to read the C: drive. If you have the right sort of utilities then you could erase and rebuild it from DOS, but it seems that you'll have to reinstall EZ-BIOS in order to use more than 8Gb, and you're right back where you started. I can boot to a CD, but when I do so I cannot access my main C: drive, as you stated. If you want to re-install W98 you can simply delete the existing installation and re-install. Just skip the part about partitioning and re-formatting. Changing the drives around won't accomplish anything, as EZ-BIOS will still need to be active in order to see the 13Gb drive, whether it's master or slave, and you've already demonstrated that you can't boot from CD and have EZ-BIOS active. I thought that might be the best thing. My concern is what drive Windows would isntall to, and how that would work. By suggesting swapping the drives, I thought that making the drive that does not need EZ-BIOS the master, so I could install Windows to that drive (I would not need access to the other drive doing it this way, correct?) Then I could proceed as normal. By far the simplest solution is to buy a new floppy drive. Another option is to limit the 13Gb drive to 8Gb and don't install EZ-BIOS. I tried various connections and a new floppy drive with no luck. The new cable I got is in fact a new cable, so I assume it's ok. The weird thing is that my original floppy drive started not reading disks properly. So, I got a cheapy floppy drive off of eBay and it worked fine for about 2 days. Then, it acted just like the other one. It can format a disk, and then soon after it can't read that disk or any other. Not a clue what the problem could be. :( -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) "SS" wrote in message ... hello, folks =) i have a somewhat complicated situation which someone perhaps can help me with :) in the near future i will be purchasing a new computer. i currently have an older model computer which is serving the purpose fine for me, but soon will (hopefully) be a backup computer. i have two hard drives on my system: a 13GB and a 2GB. The 13GB is the master C: and the 2GB is the slave D:. my bios is fairly old, so it has an 8GB limitation on it (i contacted the manufacturer of my bios to see if they have an upgrade and if it addresses larger disk drives). anyway, i installed ez-bios (from western digital) and it allowed full access to both drives with no problem. :) here's my issue: recently, my floppy drive went kaplooey (i tried a new drive, new connection, etc., with no luck, so i assume it's a bad controller on the motherboard). at some point i'd like to repartition my drives and reinstall windows 98 on it once it is my secondary computer. however ... the floppy drive does not work, which is causing issues. i really don't use the floppy for anything but would need it to boot up and run diagnostics and/or start from scratch. so, i'm trying to figure out a way to be able to get away without using my floppy at all and boot from the cd drive (if necessary). even though my bios is old, it does allow booting from a cd. however, since my master hard drive uses ez-bios, booting from the cd drive does not work (for grins, i tried booting through ez-bios with a cd in the drive to see if it might think the cd drive was A:, but it didn't work, lol). my question(s) is this: is there some way to start from scratch on my system without having access to the floppy drive? what i thought might work in theory is switching the 2GB as the master and the 13GB as the slave. that way, ez-bios would not be needed to recognize my master, and this would allow the cd drive to be bootable, no? in other words, there would be no need to see the slave drive while booting, so since the master drive would not need ez-bios, i could boot directly off the cd. is any of this possible, and if so, how would i do it? to sum things up, i want to be able to reformat and set up my computer without using the floppy drive and having ez-bios set up for the large drive (moved to the slave). thank you! scott :) |
If you don't re-partition and don't re-format then you will still be booting
to the 13Gb drive and Windows will install by default to that drive. You could set the 2Gb drive as the master and install Windows, but without a floppy you could never install EZ-BIOS to that drive, so you could never get access to the 13Gb drive. -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) "SS" wrote in message m... Howdy! Thanks for writing :) "Jeff Richards" wrote in message ... EZ-BIOS will not interfere with booting to CD. If you have a proper bootable CD and if the BIOS supports the option, just make the change to BIOS settings, insert the CD, and reboot. Of course, you wont be able to read the C: drive. If you have the right sort of utilities then you could erase and rebuild it from DOS, but it seems that you'll have to reinstall EZ-BIOS in order to use more than 8Gb, and you're right back where you started. I can boot to a CD, but when I do so I cannot access my main C: drive, as you stated. If you want to re-install W98 you can simply delete the existing installation and re-install. Just skip the part about partitioning and re-formatting. Changing the drives around won't accomplish anything, as EZ-BIOS will still need to be active in order to see the 13Gb drive, whether it's master or slave, and you've already demonstrated that you can't boot from CD and have EZ-BIOS active. I thought that might be the best thing. My concern is what drive Windows would isntall to, and how that would work. By suggesting swapping the drives, I thought that making the drive that does not need EZ-BIOS the master, so I could install Windows to that drive (I would not need access to the other drive doing it this way, correct?) Then I could proceed as normal. By far the simplest solution is to buy a new floppy drive. Another option is to limit the 13Gb drive to 8Gb and don't install EZ-BIOS. I tried various connections and a new floppy drive with no luck. The new cable I got is in fact a new cable, so I assume it's ok. The weird thing is that my original floppy drive started not reading disks properly. So, I got a cheapy floppy drive off of eBay and it worked fine for about 2 days. Then, it acted just like the other one. It can format a disk, and then soon after it can't read that disk or any other. Not a clue what the problem could be. :( -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) "SS" wrote in message ... hello, folks =) i have a somewhat complicated situation which someone perhaps can help me with :) in the near future i will be purchasing a new computer. i currently have an older model computer which is serving the purpose fine for me, but soon will (hopefully) be a backup computer. i have two hard drives on my system: a 13GB and a 2GB. The 13GB is the master C: and the 2GB is the slave D:. my bios is fairly old, so it has an 8GB limitation on it (i contacted the manufacturer of my bios to see if they have an upgrade and if it addresses larger disk drives). anyway, i installed ez-bios (from western digital) and it allowed full access to both drives with no problem. :) here's my issue: recently, my floppy drive went kaplooey (i tried a new drive, new connection, etc., with no luck, so i assume it's a bad controller on the motherboard). at some point i'd like to repartition my drives and reinstall windows 98 on it once it is my secondary computer. however ... the floppy drive does not work, which is causing issues. i really don't use the floppy for anything but would need it to boot up and run diagnostics and/or start from scratch. so, i'm trying to figure out a way to be able to get away without using my floppy at all and boot from the cd drive (if necessary). even though my bios is old, it does allow booting from a cd. however, since my master hard drive uses ez-bios, booting from the cd drive does not work (for grins, i tried booting through ez-bios with a cd in the drive to see if it might think the cd drive was A:, but it didn't work, lol). my question(s) is this: is there some way to start from scratch on my system without having access to the floppy drive? what i thought might work in theory is switching the 2GB as the master and the 13GB as the slave. that way, ez-bios would not be needed to recognize my master, and this would allow the cd drive to be bootable, no? in other words, there would be no need to see the slave drive while booting, so since the master drive would not need ez-bios, i could boot directly off the cd. is any of this possible, and if so, how would i do it? to sum things up, i want to be able to reformat and set up my computer without using the floppy drive and having ez-bios set up for the large drive (moved to the slave). thank you! scott :) |
On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 00:25:00 GMT, "SS" wrote:
in the near future i will be purchasing a new computer. i currently have an older model computer which is serving the purpose fine for me, but soon will (hopefully) be a backup computer. i have two hard drives on my system: a 13GB and a 2GB. The 13GB is the master C: and the 2GB is the slave D:. my bios is fairly old, so it has an 8GB limitation on it (i contacted the manufacturer of my bios to see if they have an upgrade and if it addresses larger disk drives). anyway, i installed ez-bios (from western digital) and it allowed full access to both drives I've wrestled with EZBIOS (or was it EZIDE?) and it's a bitch. Sorry, bitches everywhere, to insult y'all; it was worse than a bitch! with no problem. :) As long as you don't try to boot directly off HD. Also, if you were to drop that HD into the new PC, it wouldn't see the volumes; FDisk would show these has having the "correct" size but on non-DOS type. EZBIOS boots first and then offers you to press a key to boot off diskette. That's informal; any boot code malware will already have run from the HD in this scenario. In practice, many boot code malware will clobber EZBIOS and leave your data in limbo. EZBIOS = Difficult Troubleshooting. here's my issue: recently, my floppy drive went kaplooey (i tried a new drive, new connection, etc., with no luck, so i assume it's a bad controller on the motherboard). at some point i'd like to repartition my drives and reinstall windows 98 on it once it is my secondary computer. however ... the floppy drive does not work, which is causing issues. Yup. Get another. i really don't use the floppy for anything It's your bootability lifeboat, especially on PCs too old to support HDs over 8G (what chance bootable USB stick support?) even though my bios is old, it does allow booting from a cd. however, since my master hard drive uses ez-bios, booting from the cd drive does not work Quite. And THAT is your real crisis. my question(s) is this: is there some way to start from scratch on my system without having access to the floppy drive? With one partition, you may be able to fix this via Plan A: Check C: via Scandisk, make sure no errors to start with Boot into DOS mode via 1.44M or whatever Use DiskEdit or other raw sector editing tool Save copy of CHS 0,0,1 (the Master Boot Record) Save copy of CHS 0,0,2 (EZBIOS's "MBR") At this point, eyeball these two sectors, or copies thereof. Expect to see CHS 0,0,1's partition table showing one partition of the right size, but wrong type (i.e. a "non-DOS" type unique to EZBIOS). Expect to see CHS 0,0,2's partition table looking exactly the same as above, except the partition type is correct. If any of the above expectations do not hold, DO NOT CONTINUE. Write CHS 0,0,2 over CHS 0,0,1 Reboot off HD and attempt DOS mode via F8 Scandisk; don't fix anything, there should be no errors If errors, undo by writing old CHS 0,0,1 back in place I found this method recovered the primary partition so that it could be seen from other PCs or via a true diskette boot, but did NOT recover any logical volumes within an extended partition. Else, Plan B: Drop 2nd HD into system De-lamer Explorer to show all files, extensions etc. Copy everything off C: to the extra HD Repeat for any other volumes on the old HD Swap HDs, attempt boot off new HD that has no EZBIOS If works, and all files OK, etc. then wipe and rebuild old HD Swap HDs back again; if OK, your quest is done If your BIOS is still too lame to see 8G, live with it - i.e. use larger HDs as if they were 8G. Expect an unrelated problem of 32G to cause HDs 32G to hard-lock the system when detected. Some old PCs that can't see 8G are paradoxically OK for 32G. All will likely fail 137G. what i thought might work in theory is switching the 2GB as the master and the 13GB as the slave. that way, ez-bios would not be needed to recognize my master, and this would allow the cd drive to be bootable, no? EZBIOS is a face-hugger. No man cometh unto the HD but by EZBIOS's crappy code. It's a dependency as harsh as being infected with an encrypting boot virus; your data lives only as long as EZBIOS lives. One MBR infection, bad av cleanup, of FDisk /MBR, and it's all over. --------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - Tech Support: The guys who follow the 'Parade of New Products' with a shovel. --------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - |
There is information on creating a boot floppy he
http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php??%20print("p_sid=$p_sid&p_lva=$p_lv a&p_li=$p_li")%20?&p_faqid=1363&p_created=1045110 998 If you can image that floppy to a bootable CD then you will be able to use the CD to boot with EZ-BIOS support. I have no idea whether or not this sort of imaging is possible. I suspect any procedure that creates a bootable CD will create it's own boot record, eliminating the critical component of the EZ-BIOS bootable floppy. -- Jeff Richards MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User) "SS" wrote in message m... howdy! :) snip hmm, what do you mean by "with ez-bios" access? i can create a bootable cd but either: 1) it boots off the cd before loading ez-bios, thus not allowing me to see my master drive, or 2) ez-bios loads, and does not give me the option to boot off the cd so either way it won't work? |
All times are GMT +1. The time now is 10:12 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Win98Banter.com