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additional note on drive lettering..
Thursday, December 6, 2007 at 9:26 am
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by C K
(6031 messages posted)
You state that the drive letter for W2K was "F".. Without knowing how the machine
was originally configured, I can only guess that the F drive isn't being assigned
the "F" letter by the BIOS and when booting, this won't work with W2K.. The normal
lettering for the BIOS assignments is as follows for your description of the set
up..
first hard drive (drive 0, primary master, primary active partition): letter is
always "C"
(Note that you should have both hard drives on the same IDE channel. Pairing a hard
drive with a CD device, slows down the speed as CD and HDD's have different spec/protocols
and operate at different speeds. The hard drive will be waiting longer to transfer
data due to the CD ROM's transfer specs/timing.)
Second hard drive (drive ,1 secondary master, primary partition): will be lettered
"D" then,
First hard drive (drive zero, primary master, extended partition first logical drive):
will be lettered "E" and any aditional logical drives on that HDD will be lettered
"F", "G" and so on until they are all lettered then,
Second hard drive (drive 1, secondary master, extended partition first logical drive
if any/needed): will be lettered from where the logical drives ended in the alphabet
for the first drive's logical drives until they have all been assigned letters then,
The CDROM's and any other devices will be lettered in sequence. Sometimes flash
drives can upset this scheme, depending on the BIOS and the motherboard so in some
instances, leaving a flash drive connected while booting will cause the lettering
to change from what it was when the install was done. If it only effects the CD
devices, it isn't a big deal until W2K or Win 9X wants to see something on the CD
ROM and it isn't found at the old drive letter. (like for updating Windows or adding
options/repairing etc)
It looks to me as the BOIS not lettering the drives to match the letter that W2K
originally installed under and if not, it won't boot. Once installed on a certian
drive letter or boot order, W2K's drive designation/boot order, can't be changed
without a repair install, to repair it and the registry..
On Wednesday, December 5, 2007 at 5:56 pm, Malcolm Fowler wrote:
>Hi CK,Thanks for the quick response... I understand what you are saying - just
>didn't know this before I started! - problem is that the old M/B had completely
died
>so it is not possible to reboot with the old mother board to recover drivers etc.. Looks
>like a repair install is the only option however I was trying to avoid this as this
>upgrade/repair is meant to be a surprise for my son and I didn't want to have to
>ask him for his 2000 disk!! I understand there may be a way round this using a boot
>disk and manually installing the correct IDE drivers (?) I'm running the IDE in
>DMA mode I had not considered an excess of RAM for 98SE - could this be why I
have
>been getting "not enough memory" messages?! As always the best intentioned and
>"simple" upgrades (I was just passing on my second hand board/processor and memory
>after upgrading my own machine) result in many frustrations.... Thanks again
>
>
>
>
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