MS DOS boot partition

[Phil Hogan]

i bought an old computer and cannot reboot it, Ive tried format FDISK and so on but it gives me a message saying: you need to make a MS-DOS boot partition, Where do i start. I realy want to get this system up and running but am struggling Ive tried deltree
No luck and the hard disk is fine i scanned it and formatted it with my other PC but still no luck and still same message

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Windows98 Second Edition
32MB Ram on FAT32(Olivetti PC P75s modulo) AOL Internet

[Phil Hogan]

Ignore WIN98 Spec thats my other PC

[Eeyore]

If you partitioned the drive in another computer where it was a slave or second hard disk, it most likely was not set as active. DOS can only set one ACTIVE partition on a computer although each drive can have an active partition.

Run FDISK (http://www.geocities.com/politalk/dos/partiton.htm#screen2) and check or set the ACTIVE Partition.

Hope it is that simple of a fix.
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My
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Dennis
Politalk (http://www.geocities.com/politalk)

[Phil Hogan]

Do you mean put the hard drive as my main drive on my computer and FDISK?

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Windows98 Second Edition
32MB Ram on FAT32(Olivetti PC P75s modulo) AOL Internet

[Eeyore]

If the drive is the only Hard disk in the computer, you should be able to boot from a floppy disk with FDISK on it. When you run the FDISK program, you need to make sure the drive is set as ACTIVE. If you have more than one hard drive, you could make any of them ACTIVE. However, DOS can only make ONE ACTIVE at a time. So if you partitioned the drive in another computer, where that computer had its own hard drive that you booted from, that computer's C drive would be ACTIVE. But the drive you added to partition would not. When you move it to its own computer, you would have to make it active before you can boot off of it.

If you boot with a bootdisk and run FDISK, does the computer show the hard disk? Are there any partitions on the hard disk? Is there a PRIMARY DOS PArtition on the disk?

I had a computer where the second drive was partitioned totally as an EXTENDED Partition. When the primary drive failed, the second drive could not be made bootable. Windows 98 carved a 1mb Primary DOS partiton out of the drive. But that was the best I could do without losing everything. I didn't have a late enough Partition Magic to change a 30gb drive.
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My
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Dennis
Politalk (http://www.geocities.com/politalk)

[Phil Hogan]

I keep getting message saying it isnt a FAT 16 or FAT32 the actual bios finds it but not when its booting up, The hardisk is a fat 16 but doesnt register on boot so boot ends up unsuccesful.
http://discussions.virtualdr.com/confused.gif

[Eeyore]

Does FDISK see the drive? Does it see any partitions? Are there any DOS partitions shown or any NON-DOS paritions?

This doesn't quite add up. I'm thinking that the settings are wrong in the BIOS Setup. I don't know what computer it is so I acn only suggest the standard Press the del key at bootup to enter the BIOS Setup. If you know the CYL, HEADS, etc. for the hard drive (should be on the label) make sure those are correct for the drive's settings. If it is a somewhat late model computer, you will also ahve three choices for the drive type: NOEMAL, LBA, LARGE. Normal is for drives less than 512mb in size. LBA is for drives up to 2.1gb. Large is for drives to be formatted as FAT32 which must be over 512mb.

If these settings are incorrect, it may cause a miss reading of the drive. The ony other option is to wipe all partitions with a Debug script or program. But I would like to think it is not that extreme.

Check these and hopefully we will come up with other ideas.
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My
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Dennis
Politalk (http://www.geocities.com/politalk)

[Phil Hogan]

The harddisc is recognised when i press auto in bios and it lists all the CYL, Heads Ect!!! but opnly recognises it on HD2 it wont take it up on Harddrive 0,1, or 3 The puter is Digital Venturis 466 probably the year it was made Lol.

[Phil Hogan]

P.S It also had windows 3.1 on it before

[Phil Hogan]

But on different Hardrive Ive got that in my other puter as a slave and put windows 95 on it no problem

[Eeyore]

If there is only one hard drive in the computer and it is being recognized as disk2, the hard drive is physically connected to the Second IDE channel. The computer apparently has an EIDE interface which will support up to 4 IDE devices, two on each channel. You will most likely see four listings at boot.

If it is on the first IDE channel, it may be jumpered as slave.

If you trace the leads from the hard drive to the motherboard, you should see two 40 pin connectors side by side. One is Channel 0 and the other is Channel 1. The drive should be connected to Channel 0 and jumpered as Single (if by itself) or as Master if another device such as a CDROM is on the same lead. The other device must be set as Slave.

My guess id that the computer had more than one hard disk and the primary was removed before you bought the computer.

See it this helps.
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Dennis
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