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Old May 28th 10, 06:30 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.disks.general
Steven Saunderson
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 37
Default Problem with accessing a partition

On Thu, 27 May 2010 13:11:31 -0700, Andrew
wrote:

While browsing the Partition Magic installation CD-ROM, I found extra
utilities on it. One of them was the ptedit32.exe, i.e., Partition Table
Editor v1.1 of 2002. The nice thing about this editor is that it is still
downloadable from the Internet and its interface is in plain English.

I used it to change my 0Bs to 0Cs, but I failed. To be more precise, I was
able to make such changes with this utility and save them (they even were in
place after rebooting the computer), but everything returned to the previous
situation, as soon, as I opened Partition Magic.


A simple test here might show whether we're on the right track. Use
Partition Magic to make your Win98 system partition active and then use
ptedit.exe (I assume you boot using a DOS floppy to use ptedit) to
change the partition types from 0B to 0C. Then you could start Win98
and see if it can see the partitions properly and also that you have no
phantom drives in Explorer. Phantom drives have a drive letter but if
you try to view them in Explorer it will tell you the volume isn't
formatted. If the partitions don't appear then the problem is
elsewhere.

Although your reasoning about my logical partitions seems to be OK, there is
probably another limitation or maybe a deficiency of Partition Magic, which
doesn't allow it. By the way, I found on the Internet an another example of
the similar situation with 2 logical 0B partitions within the ExtenedX
partition (cf. www.goodells.net.multiboot.ptedit.htm).


The partition type code issue is a bit muddled due to historical
factors. Type 0x0B is FAT32 with CHS access and type 0x0C is FAT32 with
LBA access. I believe that Win98 respects this. But all versions of
Win NT always use LBA access. So XP doesn't care whether your
partitions are 0x0B or 0x0C; it always uses LBA. If I create a FAT32
volume in XP it always gets the 0x0B code even when it's past the 1024
cylinder boundary. So if Partition Magic does the same I wouldn't call
it a bug or even a deficiency. But it can cause problems with Win98
IO.SYS so it seems a bit silly to me.

So please try the ptedit test above and tell me if it helps. I think a
better long-term solution would be to make your system multiboot with
the Win98 system partition as the active partition. Then you could
select which O/S you want at boot time and not have to play with
changing the partition table. I think this can be done without mucking
up the drive letters in either O/S. Does this approach appeal to you ?

Cheers,
--
Steven