What setting should I look for in the BIOS?

I did have a look at the options there (when I reconfigured it to recognise the new 
hard disk), but there was nothing that I thought I should change. There were a lot 
of options for peripherals, USB, etc. Certainly nothing obvious. What should I look 
for?

The disk tools from Western Digital only give an option to setup the disk as a whole. 
In order to make any later changes, they insist that you delete the partition table 
and start again. That would wipe out drive C as well as drives D and E. I'm not willing 
to do that as a first step, only as a last resort, because drive C: and D: are working 
fine.

I'm quite happy to use FDISK. I set up a disk under WinME for my mother last year, 
using the WinME version of FDISK. So I've now tried out the suggestion made earlier, 
to shrink or enlarge D: by a GB, using the updated version of FDISK to do it. But 
it has proved unsuccessful, as drive E: is still not being recognised.

The Microsoft article which was suggested led me on to more information. An article 
at http://www.infinisource.com/techfiles/msdos-compatibility.html has advised looking 
for BAD_IDE values in the registry. I found some, at

 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\hdc\0000 

and now am wondering whether I should just delete the value or the entire key?

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\hdc\0000]
"DriverDesc"="Standard IDE/ESDI Hard Disk Controller"
"DevLoader"="*IOS"
"PortDriver"="ESDI_506.pdr"
"IDEDMADrive0"=hex:01
"IDEDMADrive1"=hex:01
"InfPath"="MSHDC.INF"
"InfSection"="BAD_IDE"
"ProviderName"="Microsoft"
"DriverDate"=" 6- 8-1999"
"MatchingDeviceId"="*PNP0600"

There is another BAD_IDE value at \hdc\0003 - once again the value is "InfSection"="BAD_IDE". 
I guess hdc means hard disk controller.

The Microsoft article identifies the file ESDI_506.pdr as being the driver that provides 
32-bit disk access for IDE and EIDE disks under Windows 98. Yet on looking in the 
Bootlog, I can find no trace of ESDI_506.pdr being loaded at boot time. This seems 
to show that it's not providing 32-bit disk functions!

Device Manager indicates that disk functions for the Western Digital disk are provided 
by C:\WINDOWS\INF\DISKDRV.INF (a text file which contains no reference to ESDI_506.pdr, 
nor any other file).

However, despite its presence in the Windows registry, the PC doesn't use a "Standard 
IDE/ESDI Hard Disk Controller". According to the entries in Device Manager, the PC 
uses a "VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller" for the Western Digital disk. This has 
its own drivers. So are the BAD_IDE values actually relevent? 








On Friday, February 1, 2008 at 3:06 pm, Jacob6601 wrote:

>Nobody ever said to re-partition differently, just using different tools. You could, 

>in fact, leave the primary partition (c) alone. Just delete the logical drives and 

>the extended partition -- then re-create them. If trying this is too difficult, 
then 

>good luck!

>

>And any real mode IDE drivers are in the BIOS. 

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