Some of you know of the trouble's I am having with my son's computer. here is a brief discription. I re-formated the hard drive and know with my 98se disk and the floppy start up disk it still will not work. It does recognize the CD drives, hard drives and floppy. I can change the drive letter, but any command comes up "Bad Command".
I had a friend come over last night who knows a little bit more than me about computers. We had no luck of course.
Here is what we came up with though. It appears as though that the computer is recognizing the drives upon start up but after that, No.
I have another computer (lets call it B) that I can take the hard drive out of. If I made that hard drive(B) the master and the present one a slave, could I then use the (B) drive to set up the slave????
Really I could leave it that way and just have windows on the primary and everything else on the slave. the older drive is only a 2 GB hard drive and the one I am trying to get working is a 40GB.
Any problems doing this???? Do you think it would work????
Maybe even show what is bad, if anything. I have checked all ribbons, cables, etc. and all are OK
Thanks in Advance
Posted by Jim Upchurch (Member # 209) on :
Troy, sounds like the boot disk is a different version that what is installed on the hard drive. You reinstalled Windows but it won't boot from the hard drive? Did you make the partition active with fdisk?
Posted by Troy Haas (Member # 472) on :
Jim Do you mean when I reformatted???
I am not sure as I did that a long time ago and then Stephen got restricted from the computer so I didn't mess with it for a long, long time and now I am have all this trouble.
Posted by Dave Johnson (Member # 2535) on :
Sounds to me like the disk may have not have been partitioned properly. You may have to reformat using fdisk to make it a bootable drive. Check out this link for instructions.
I had a drive that was doing much the same as you described. I finally just installed DOS 6 and then was able to install Win 98. If you have an early version of Dos, just put disk 1 in and start the computer. It will then take you through the reformatting steps.
Posted by Bob Rochon (Member # 30) on :
Troy,
Does the drive show up in the bios?
How old is the bios and or motherboard, a 40 gig drive may not be supported by an older board.
Posted by TransLab (Member # 470) on :
Adding to Bob Rochon's observation. Go to the drives manufacturers website, there are usually utilities available that allow older boards to support large drives ... Maxtor had a utility called Max drive, seagate has another, quantum has another. Also check bios setting, make sure support for large drives is enabled..
Posted by old paint (Member # 549) on :
troy...what make computer is it....if its a COMPAQ use it for a boat anchor.compaq puts their bios on the 1st sector of the hard drive....and if wiped the h/d then you wiped the bios!!! if not a compaq then your bios is set to c:\ as 1st boot. this is whay your getting bad command....you need to go into bios and set boot as per: a:\, cd-rom, hard drive. or A:\ hard drive. then when you put the 98 boot sisk in it will read from a A drive 1st.
Posted by Bill Cosharek (Member # 1274) on :
Troy,
Haven't thoroughly read thru this thread but did see you have w98se & a 40g hd. W98se has an 8g limit. In order to get it to recognize all 40g, you'll have to make at least 5 partitions. I know that's no help here but thought you might want to know. But it should, at least, recognize 8g.
Posted by TransLab (Member # 470) on :
That's not entirely correct ... my file server is running win98se and has (2) 80 gig drives , one is partitioned into (1) 10 gig and (1) 70 gig, the other has only (1) 80 gig partition.
Good article on the subject here Posted by Curtis hammond (Member # 2170) on :
HUH???? 8 Gig limit win 98se?
Win 98SE can see the entire HD whether its 4 gigs 40 gigs or 80 gigs.
Its the Bios that has the problem with recognizing bigger drives.
So, if you have an older computer with an older BIOS you may have to "flash (upgrade) the BIOS. However this is a job for someone with at least some experience with making this kind of change.
Posted by Bill Cosharek (Member # 1274) on :
Sorry about that. I knew I read it somewhere. The Partitiom Magic manual states that the limitation is with the Boot Code Boundry. That's what must be within the 1st 8g. Sorry. Should've read that 1st b4 posting.
Posted by timi NC (Member # 576) on :
Troy,had the same problem you speak of working on an older system here last nite,...The only work around I have found is to break out the old win95 disk after booting with a win98 boot disk and do an install of win95 then install win98 on top,..takes a bit longer but it works and for some insane reason the boot system for win98 will not let you run commands from the win98 cd but will work flawlessly from the win95 disk,....go figure,...
Posted by Troy Haas (Member # 472) on :
It is not a Compaq, it was a custom built machine. It is about 3 1/2 y/o system 450 mhz, I think it is 312 ram, don't remember off hand. Azus mother board, CD burner, CD-Rom and a floppy.
Get this, When I have the windows 98se CD in I can choose any drive at the A: prompt. When it is not in, it only will go from A: to C: or vice versa.
Unfortunatly I do not have a windows 95 disk or a DOS disk, Can I make either of these from the internet and this system ??
Bob & Mike, the drives do show up and I have set all the bios to defaults.
Posted by Bob Rochon (Member # 30) on :
Troy,
If it is a ful OEM copy of win 98 SE and it is an AUSUS mb, you should be able to set the boot order so that you can boot from the CD rom.
If it is showing in the bios like you said then it will boot to the Win 98 setup. If it is Formated correctly like you said then you should be able to load windows no problem.
This will eliminate any chance that you have the wrong boot disk.
[ July 31, 2003, 09:19 PM: Message edited by: Bob Rochon ]
Posted by Richard Bustamante (Member # 370) on :
This is a hardware problem.
You can't see any drives? Right?
The drives you mention work off the IDE ports. They use these giant ribbon cables, that attach to the Hrad drive, and motherboard. On the back of the hard drive there is a set of jumpers. Depending how many drives you want to hook up, the jumpers need to be set according. Master. Slave. The same goes for the CD ROM drive. Theres a primary IDE and a secondary IDE. Each have the ability to handle two drives each. The ribbon cable has two connections on one side, and the single end connector goes to the motherboard. There cannot be two masters on one cable.
Once the connections are set and configured, you'll need to go to BIOS.
BIOS is a EPROM program (eraseable/programable read only memmory) which is kept "alive" by a small battery on the motherboard. You can usually get there by pressing the delete botton during the computer start up phase. BIOS tells the motherboard what it has; hard drives, CD`s, LPT ports, the time, and so... Theres four or five catagories in BIOS. If you go to the hard disk drive(HDD) section, You'll see where to set the parameters. On some of the older machines, the BIOS won't reconize a large HDD because it uses another way to access it like; ATA, and Ultra ATA. In this case, you'll need an "overlay" program for BIOS. The CDROM that came with the HDD should have one.
If you have more than one CD drive, disconect one and try to make the remaining one work.
Things you'll need to check:
Are the jumpers set on the hard drive, and CD`s?
Does the #1 pin on the ribbon cable correspond to the drive and the motherboard?
Does "auto-detect" in BIOS find the hard drive?
Are there any error code beeps?
Have you checked the BIOS battery?
Is it a Compac or IBM computer?
-Rich
Posted by TransLab (Member # 470) on :
What make/model is the hard drive Troy?
Posted by Troy Haas (Member # 472) on :
Rich,
What do you mean, can't see aany hard drives???
When it starts up it does appear to load the drivers. It is IBM based.
Mike,
I will check and see if I can find out at least a manufacturer.
Posted by Curtis hammond (Member # 2170) on :
Troy i tried to call you today but there was no answer..
maybe tomorrow
Posted by Troy Haas (Member # 472) on :
Curtis, I appreciate the try, but we are moving this weekend and have really started already. Been going back and forth, let me call you after the weekend on my dime. Or is that $10 with inflation Posted by Troy Haas (Member # 472) on :
Oooooopppsssssssss
I am tired!!!
[ August 01, 2003, 12:45 AM: Message edited by: Troy Haas ]
Posted by Curtis hammond (Member # 2170) on :
my pleasure.....
985 781 3011
dont give up when trying , cuz im often not near the phone all the time . ill answer when i get close
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