Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 03:44:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matt Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [LIB] OT: 30GB BIOS barrier on Dell Dimension
Thanks so very much for helping me through this
Philip. I've had a few more problems I'll address
here.
>Good!
>Why have you used PM anyway?
>I think simply running W2K install from the 4
>floppies, or from bootable CD-ROM would have given
>the same results. FYI: Win2K has quite a good disk
>partitioning tool both in setup and while running.
I guess I just always reach for PM whenever I start
putting partitions and files systems onto a new drive.
Way back at some point I needed to do things that
FDISK wouldn't. Then I guess I'm just not aware of
things link W2k already including partitioning and
boot management.
>FDISK /MBR isn't that bad though. It just wipes all
>stuff beyond the very first sector on the HD (= the
>MBR itself), restores the MBR boot code and leaves
>the MBR entries intact. In fact you might need it
>again if ever Win2K's volume information (residing
>also on cyl.#0 some sectors beyond the MBR itself) is
>corrupted so much that it won't boot, to restore it
>to a default state.
I may have gotten to the point here where I've used
PM, BootMagic and AiR-BOOT to play with W2K's MBR that
it may indeed be a bit, if not very messed up at this
point. Do you just bring up a DOS window in W2K, and
run FDISK /MBR there to run it on W2K?
What's happening is, W2K on the 120GB is ignoring the
fact I set the one big FAT32/WinME partition on the
10GB HDD as 'hidden'. The 10GB HDD still pops up in
Windows Explorer (WE) as one of the drives there.
To complicate things, I installed a driver for my
external Compact Flash memory reader. Somewhere along
the way, I lost that 'removeable drive' in WE. I've
just finished trying this procedure to see if I could
correct partition problems in W2K, and at the end W2K
found the CF reader again after many tries of
reinstalling it.
>If I properly interpret all your posts up till now,
>you currently have a default WinME on C: on a primary
>HD, plus a Win2K on a secondary HD that has been
>installed while this HD was the primary.
Not exactly... I set up W2K as the only drive on IDE1,
and only the CD-ROM on IDE2. Here was my thinking:
I've had problems setting up some systems that
insisted that any boot drive had to be connected to
the very 1st plug on the end of either a primary or
secondary IDE channel. The 2nd plug being the one in
a few inches from the end. But the 10GB HDD in this
Dell is mounted on the chassis below the main bays, in
back of the cover connected to IDE1. That cable
wasn't going to reach above to the bays. There are 3
bays on the top front of the chassis. One 5.25" on
top, and 2 3.5" bays just below. The IDE2 cable had
the primary plug at the drive end plugged into the
CD-ROM. I didn't think I could have the new 120GB
boot from the inner, secondary(?) plug on IDE2.
So what I did was to just swap the 120GB HDD into the
mounting bracket where the 10GB HDD was, leave the
10GB HDD disconnected, and install W2K from there. I
couldn't install the 10GB HDD in the bay where I
originally had the 120GB HDD because there were no
holes on the side of the 10GB to accept the extra set
of clip-on rails provided.
After 30-45 minutes of trying a number of different
connections, and jumper settings, I finally found a
combination that allowed all 3 drives to be recognized
in BIOS and both OSs. 10GB where it was as sole drive
on IDE1, and CD-ROM and 120GB above on IDE2 with
jumpers on both CD-ROM and the 120HDD set 'cable
select'. So at that point, I could boot WinME from
10GB, and W2K on the 120GB was invisable on on of 2
NTFS partitions there.
>If this is the case, I think Win2K won't boot in this
>constellation, because its boot drive letters will
>be mixed up. It was installed while it was C:, but
>after the HD swap it ended up on D: or whatever. In
>addition, its volume info is now on the wrong HD (it
>should be on the primary one).
And not getting W2K to boot with 120GB on the
secondary ribbon cable on the IDE3 channel was where
problems developed. I couldn't get BootMagic or
AiR-BOOT to boot W2K on the 120GB HDD, that drive
connected to IDE2 jumpered to 'cable select. In order
to set a few things up like moving data from 10GB to
120GB, I created a 10GB FAT 32 partition at the end of
120GB. That got data from 10GB to 120GB. But the
only way to get it set up in newly installed programs
in W2K meant switching IDE1 cable to the IDE2 socket
on the MB, and the IDE1 cable to the IDE2 cable.
That probably made W2K go biserk (sp?). I kept
getting drives reported out of order they should have
been as a result of using PM to hide and unhide
partitions in both WinME and W2. And I'm at the point
of scraping everything on the 120GB, and starting over
if I can't get what I've got here working.
>But perhaps this is not what you want. From your
>posts I
>can't make up for sure what you want as final result:
Which Windows on which HD fitted on which IDE channel?
Win2K aware of WinME? (if not, WinME must be totally
hidden while Win2K boots) WinME aware of Win2K? (only
possible if Win2K is on FAT) And: Is there really a
compelling reason to keep WinME? (knowing that Win2K
is so much better)
What I'd like if it's possible is getting both OSs
boot via some boot manager, the 2 partitions with OSs
hidden from each other. Beyong that it'd be nice to
have that FAT32 partition visible to each OS for
tranfserring files. But I've run into problems with
the latter when the drive letter for that Fat32
partition ends up different in each OS. At one poing
W2K couldn't see the Fat32 partition because I'd had
it set to D: for the WinME OS.
>The easiest would have been just installing Win2K on
the 120GB HD as secondary HD while the old 10GB HD
with WinME was still present. I.e., the HW
configuration you described in your recent posts.
But the cable on IDE1 wasn't going to reach both 10GB
and 120GB.
But are you saying that it may be possible to get W2K
to boot as the secondary drive on IDE2 with the
CD-ROM?
I've sure gotten myself a bit over my head with all
this.
> Si.... bueno!
>
> Philip
?Philip?
Opps! I pasted that message from Word to Yahoo Mail,
thougt I'd corrected that, but then went back to Word
to correct a few thing above, and forgot to correct it
again before copying and pasting back to YM
Matt... at least this time ;-P
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