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ME Reinstallation (Clean Install) Problems



 
 
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  #51  
Old July 2nd 04, 11:24 PM
cquirke (MVP Win9x)
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Default ME Reinstallation (Clean Install) Problems

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 21:20:58 GMT, (RN)

cquirke, thanks for the response.


Sorry I've been away for a while (on RLIs)

OK. You make me nervous when you list the OSs; surely you don't let
those baskets off the leash in the wrong PC?


Yeah, I've moved them between PC's. I've done it lots of times in the past and the worst case is
having to reload the OS -- not that painful (at least until now).


You and I differ in terms of what constitutes pain.

The more you learn about...
- the need to patch out-the-box code
- the need to manage out-the-box risky duhfault settings
....the less you will tolerate the damage of "just re-install".

The 60 gig drive with ME OS has always worked in
the non-working box,


I presume by "has" you mean "had"?

and I had to change the CPU and motherboard anyway when the
old CPU died, so the OS was going to go thru some turmoil one
way or the other.


OK. Un-muddied waters are clearer to troubleshoot in - plus running
any Windows when there are doubts about...
- hardware flakiness
- HD geometry settings
- file system condition
- active malware
....is IMO unacceptably dangerous, because the OS *will* write to the
file system and will run active malware embedded or patched into it.

The 120 gig drive with XP OS was installed in the working box about
a week ago, but I never register it


I presume you mean "activate", not "register". It's a matter of
privacy concern when these terms are bandied about interchangeably,
given that the first is private and mandatory while the second has
privacy implications and is optional. By mixing these up, readers can
fall into "mandatory privacy damage" territory.

because of all of the uncertainty this problem has caused.


Yep. WPA really is a PITA in these conditions.

I DID try it in the non-working box, and it did work. However, with
XP's tight license requirements, it now won't let me in without
immediately registering


ACTIVATE, not REGISTER, please! Once the user base accepts mandatory
registration, the door is open for rental slavery, and that is a
future to be avoided. Don't shoot "own goals", please :-)

You could still be. The sequence of geometry control may differ
between running an OS (where the OS gains control immediately, and may
look up and re-use the old system's recorded geometry) and installing
it (where the wannabe-OS may take the BIOS's view of the geometry as
the starting point, and go hopelessly off the rails thereafter).


Although I'm more technically proficient than most people that post here
and don't mind getting into the box, I'm not a technical expert. You have
lost me with that one.


I find this confusing stuff too, and I can't quote you the mechanics
as to how or why these things fall apart - it's Shroedinger's Cat
territory; one moment you're OK and the next you aren't, and what
actually happens within the box during the state change is... obscure.

So I re-state the approach as a "voodoo" rule:

Don't partition and format a HD in a PC other than the one
it is destined to operate in, unless you are COAB certain
that both PCs share identical BIOS/CMOS HD geometry
and addressing strategies

I stick to the rule, or I come unstuck :-)

2) I used XP's computer management disk management functionality to reformat
the 30.7 gig drive for nteenth time.


That useless garbage not only can't format FAT32 32G, it fails as
destructively (destroys existing data) and annoyingly (grinds all the
way to 32G before falling on its ass) as possible.


Again, I'm only dealing with 30.7 gigs on the trouble drive. Besides I do have the 60 gig ME
drive that works perfectly. I thought that the G.T 32 gig rule applies to the whole drive only if
the drive is not partitioned into partitions of less than 32 gigs.


Yes, it does - but why trust a tool that you know is broken? If they
are prepared to release it in such broken form, who knows what other
screw-ups it may make? I'd rather fire the dangerously-incompitent
employee than give him a different mission-critical job to screw up.

I'm no fan of XP either.


Oh, I like XP. I just have no illusions about a system that large
being uniformally excellent throughout, and stay away from the
half-assed (NTFS with no maintenance OS, flawed user accounts model,
incompitent disk management) or broken bits.

Any suggestions about what other formatter I could use?


BING. I was reluctant to use a 3rd-party partitioner/formatter, as a
corollory of the voodoo rule I mentioned (i.e. "don't use partitioning
or formatting tools that aren't native to the intended OS"), but I
find that BING not only doesn't screw up, but it works where
low-horizon native OS tools do screw up (FDisk 99G).

Each volume has a label, which is actually stored in two places - one
is within the Partition Boot Record (primary) or Volume "Boot" Record
(logical on extended), and the other is stored as a directory entry in
the root. The latter is "zero-bytes" i.e. points to no data cluster,
and has the Volume attribute set. Until LFNs came along, it was the
only directory entry type that used the Volume attribute bit.


So what you prolly see there is that the formatter has populated the
volume label field with "New Volume", or that moniker is thrown up by
the OS when it finds a nul volume label field.


You've lost me with that one. Sorry.


OK. It's not crucial, so I'll just say: Stare at it until it makes
sense, or file it away until you've grown molars that can chew it g
....as X-Files would have it, "the truth is in there" :-)

6 gig drive -- DOS DOES NOT recognize the fat32 primary partition, however,
when I make the drive a single drive and don't use DOS, ME OS DOES boot (very
strange).


Yep. Perhaps when you boot it, the OS's geometry as recorded in the
PBR is put into effect, whereas when you boot off something else, that
something else uses geometry as provided by BIOS.


Sorry, you've lost me on that one, too. Incidentally, BIOS does correctly detect all the drives.


BIOS sees entire HDs at the hardware level; that is all.

The BIOS's system code extension in the boot HD's MBR (Master Boot
Record) is what has to see partitions properly.

Once control passes to the OS's PBR (Partition Boot Code), the OS's
view of HD and partition geometry may prevail.

So when you boot HD A, you get the BIOS code that is common to that PC
in all cases, then HD A's MBR, then HD A's PBR and OS. When you boot
HD B, you get different MBR and PBR/OS. When you boot off some other
device, you have that device's boot code and OS instead.

So you can see the potential for variance there.

I'm sorry if this stuff is confusing or "dense", but I can't change
what it is - dummying it down to what it is not would be a disservice
to you, so I'm trying to describe it as accurately as I can. That
way, you know what you have to read up to understand, and once you do,
you should be OK without thinking you are on top of things that are
still unknown and will bite you later.

That's my general posting approach - maybe other readers can flesh out
the gap between what I've written (hopefully tech-accurate, but too
dense for everyone to understand?) and what you need to read.

As you're processing the 120G without hard lockups on xIDE detect,
both systems should be new enough to use modern LBA addressing. But
are they set to use that in CMOS setup, or left as "Auto"?


Before I did any of the stuff referred to in my post of earlier today, I did go into BIOS and
changed the setting to LBA addressing. It had been set to Auto.


Ah. I wonder how often that screws things up; I always change that to
LBA on Day Zero, knowing that Windows uses LBA and hoping that will
keep BIOS and Windows speaking the same language.

I worry because I see different capacities when the same HD is viewed
by BIOS/CMOS setup using the different addressing options there. As
soon as you see that capacity variance, you can expect trouble.

Perhaps it's time we had the motherboard chipsets, or at least some
generation info (Slot One vs. Socket 370 vs. Socket 478 etc.)?


We're dealing with an ECS Elite Group motherboard for AMD processors. (KT600-a model).


OK, but mobo brand isn't as useful to know as chipset, and perhaps the
BIOS vendor and version. As it's AMD, you are in the shaky hands of
VIA or SiS, or the hopefully stronger hands of nVidia.

o KT600 Northbridge Chipset.
o VT8237 Southbridge Chipset


Ah, bless; the info I was hoping to see! Both VIA, who are known to
have screwed up big time at least once (a defective chipset design
that corrupted xIDE data under particular circs) and to have managed
that crisis poorly (no board recall, just a BIOS update that
dumbed-down timings to try and avoid the screw-up).

Read those chipsets up (as well as the mobos and BIOSs) to see if the
FAQs etc. hold any dirty linen. If so, and if they punt a BIOS update
as the fix, then read everything about that to spot caveats, procedure
warnings, and other likely fall-out such as "you may need to
re-install the OS (because wev'e screwed up the assumption base of the
OSs PnP and have killed the settings WPA was expecting)"

o Award BIOS


OK, nice that there's same BIOS vendor for both. There may be details
within BIOS version, and as Award sell BIOS to mobo vendors as source
code the vendors can mutate, take Award's advice about "check your
mobo vendor" at face value and do just that :-)



-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

No, perfection is not an entrance requirement.
We'll settle for integrity and humility
-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

  #52  
Old July 2nd 04, 11:26 PM
cquirke (MVP Win9x)
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Default ME Reinstallation (Clean Install) Problems

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 22:37:01 +0100, "Noel Paton"

Why are you so resistant to using the tools that come with ME - the floppy,
and FDISK/FORMAT


At least then you know that the tool is the right one!


In this case (60G HD and smaller) I agree with you, Noel; these tools
are more compitent than XP's broken stuff - until you get to 99G+,
after which there's no MSware that doesn't suck, and it's hello BING.



---------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

"This bahaviour is by design"?
What kind of 'design' is that?
---------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

  #53  
Old July 2nd 04, 11:34 PM
cquirke (MVP Win9x)
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Default ME Reinstallation (Clean Install) Problems

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 06:42:37 +0100, "Noel Paton"

Sorry to post-flood, but each post in this thread seems to have
something in it that I feel the urge to choep about :-)

If FDISK doesn't see the drive, then you have a hardware or BIOS problem!


Yes, that is true.

But there's a difference between FDisk notr seeing the HD, and FDisk
seeing the HD but not seeing any partitions, or seeing a different
partition layout. This is the wilderness the OP is in, and it's WILD.

Presumably the BIOS sees the HD OK?


Yep. That's not the problem, though it may be (most likely is) the
problem that different BIOSs are seeing the same HDs through the lens
of different CHS values and addressing strategies.



-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

No, perfection is not an entrance requirement.
We'll settle for integrity and humility
-------------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

  #54  
Old July 2nd 04, 11:38 PM
Noel Paton
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Default ME Reinstallation (Clean Install) Problems

You? dogmatic? Nah!


--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2004, Win9x)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.btinternet.com/~winnoel/millsrpch.htm

Please read http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm on how to post messages to NG's
or
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/f.../Mar27pmvp.asp

"cquirke (MVP Win9x)" wrote in message
...

snip
But I could be wrong, not having followed this thread with the rigor
I'd need to make maximally-dogmatic comments on :-)

snip



  #55  
Old July 2nd 04, 11:41 PM
cquirke (MVP Win9x)
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Default ME Reinstallation (Clean Install) Problems

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 13:49:05 GMT, (RN)

If FDISK doesn't see the drive, then you have a hardware or BIOS problem!
Presumably the BIOS sees the HD OK?


Well, Noel, cquirke, Mike and anyone else that has tried to help, thanks for your efforts, but I
give up. I'll go out later today and buy a new drive.


If, as I suspect, the problem locus is BIOS addressing, then you will
have to face the same demons with the new HD unless you follow the
voodoo rule I gave you a while back.

And if you are prepared to follow that rule, and don't mind nuking the
HD you already have, no need to buy a new one.

In order to swap HDs between PCs, both PCs MUST use compatible
addressing schemes unless your method of use is proven (by your own
testing) to work around this. For what you are doing, you need to
learn about Auto vs. LBA vs. CHS vs. Normal vs. Large, tho the most
likely end-point will be "force LBA on all PCs before setting up HDs"

I've expended far more time on this than is
warranted and it's not worth any addiditonal effort.


Blindly throwng money at a problem in the hope that it will stick is a
valid tshooting approach (not first choice, but desperate days make
desperate solutions look interesting) but not one that always works.

IOW I'm not knocking your decision here, just a heads-up that you may
find it doesn't squash the hamster under the carpet.

Noel (and the rest), I am convinced that we are dealing with a hardware problem, and the piece of
problem hardware is the 30.7 gig drive -- despite the fact that all SMART tests say the drive is fine.


I think you have the wrong problem locus there - it's more likely bad
settings in CMOS, or a sucky mobo/BIOS.

But I could be wrong, not having followed this thread with the rigor
I'd need to make maximally-dogmatic comments on :-)

snip



------------------------------------ ---- --- -- - - - -

"Verbogeny is one of the pleasurettes of a creatific thinkerizer."
-- Peter da Silva
------------------------------------ ---- --- -- - - - -

  #56  
Old July 3rd 04, 04:35 PM
cquirke (MVP Win9x)
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Posts: n/a
Default ME Reinstallation (Clean Install) Problems

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 23:38:19 +0100, "Noel Paton"

You? dogmatic? Nah!


"Arf! she said" - FZ

g


------------------------ ---- --- -- - - - -

Am I the only one who thinks sliced bread sucks?
  #57  
Old July 8th 04, 02:03 PM
RN
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Default ME Reinstallation (Clean Install) Problems

Noel & Chris, thanks for additional follow-up on the issue.

I've been on vacation (holiday, for you Chris (I think you call it what the Euros do)) for the
last week and am just now starting to read the new posts to the thread.

I'll be back!

 




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