dencorso

Well you can boot it to true DOS and use grub4dos to cause it to subsequently boot from your old HDD.

OK, but with all due respect, all repliers are sidestepping part of the OP's initial question, and this got me curious, too. So, then... is there any (preferably MS, but not necessarily MS) solution to run a program as a service in Vista+, just as one can do it using srvany in XP?

And there's soporific's Complete List of Hotfixes + Updates for 98 SE, which is not up-to-date anymore, but should not be neglected, either.

I'm glad to hear it worked! I don't believe there's any real lack of support from your BIOS for your new HDD. I think more likely it's one of those things so called "by design", since I've seein it happen on some HP laptops in the past. Now that we know that your DVD drive is OK and able to boot, the next step would be to try to keep the HDD enable in the main (first) BIOS screen, but to remove it completely from the BIOS BOOT screen (which uses to be the last one) only. If that works, you'll have a way to boot the CD while having the machine still recognize the HDD. If that turns out not to be possible, the next idea is to find out the machine's alternate boot Key (usually Esc, F11 or F12), to change the default boot device on the fly. This key should be pressed repetitively from the point the screen first lights up on reboot, and then it'll give you a boot device selection screen, from where you can select the DVD when needed. If even that proves not to work, then we can resort to 3rd party boot managers, like PloP... But let's try one thing at a time, right?

allen2 is right. We need to establish whether the DVD drive is still able to boot or not. If you can disable the HDD on BIOS, and set the machine to boot solely from the DVD drive that might be enough. But the surest way to find out would be to physically disconnect the HDD also, besides setting the machine to boot from the DVD drive.

Use midiox desktop restore... Get both the GUI version and the command-line version. Then sort the desktop and save the layout, with a custom name, using the GUI version. Then create a new shortcut in the desktop. Fill the destination with the fully qualified name (drive:\path\name.exe /parameter) of the command-line version and set it to restore the custom named layout you created in the previous step. Set the shortcut to run minimized. Then move the shortcut to the startup folder in the start menu. I've never found one single system where midiox's files don't work, up to now. And it's freeware!

Two different HDDs shouldn't fail exactly the same way with the same clusters. That is very improbable. But the southbridge might be defective, and always fail at the same addresses. If the Hitachi is a different machine, do test both HDDs using it, and if the HDDs pass, then probably it *is* a motherboard problem. When an HDD has real problems, they should manifest themselves whatever the machine they're connected to.

No. Those IDE HDDs seem to be bad beyond recovering, IMO. Buy yourself some random IDE HDDs on eBay. Smaller ones are cheap. Last time I needed one I bought one 20 GB Maxtor, one 30 GB Maxtor, one 40 GB WD and one 40 GB Seagate for US$ 14 the lot. Then I repartitioned and formatted each to a single partition. The 20 GB died during the testing I submitted them next (chkdsk/r; ndd ; scandisk; dosfsck -vft; spinrite 6.0 level 2). All the others are working OK for months already.

With all due respect, why? Aren't BartPE, Winbuilder, MakePE3 ... enough, already? What's the point in coding yet another PE builder?

Well, there even is a version of it for the NT-Family, still available: wntipcfg!

True, there's winipcfg, too. But there also is ipconfig in 98FE/98SE/ME. For 98FE it's findable in NET8.CAB. @Tripredacus: Now, something is really amiss there, because ipconfig ought to run all right, from inside a DOS box.... But, when in doubt, do reboot and try again.

Did you look at oldapps and at MDGx's?

ipconfig.exe is a PE executable (Win32), so it won't run in true DOS. The last version I remember that was a common DOS executable was the one that came with mstcpip, as part of Win4Wkgp311, if I'm not mistaken (which could well be the case, for that was really long ago).

By adding a good SATA PCI card you may get > 137GB support (due to the card's onboard BIOS extension), which a SATA - PATA adapter simply does not provide. That said, the adapters based on JM20330 simply convert the interface, but don't affect much the final tranfer rates. The Toshiba disk I used in most of my tests is a particularly slow SATA I disk, and it gave me 35 MB/s when connected to the SATA port, and the same using the adapter to the mobo PATA controller, and still the same using the Pomise card with the adapter. Now, using a 500 GB 7200.11 Seagate SATA II disk, duly jumpered to SATA I, I've got around 90 MB/s, while my main disk in that setup, which is a 80 GB 7200.10 Seagate PATA disk gives consistently 75 MB/s, being connected to the 1st PATA channel as Master (all these are sequencial read times), So, I think the adapter hasn't much influence in the tranfer rates at all, but your mobo and the actual disk native speed sure do.

Since, as jaclaz rightly pointed out, the OP problem is solved, and we now have also a list of HDDs still using 512 byte sectors, we can move on. And I find your issue interesting, in that it shouldn't be happening. So I'll insist some more, unless you really don't want to touch it right now. My question is: since you've installed BHDD31, you should have ESDI_506.PDR v. 4.10.0.2230 in %windir%\system\iosubsys... Please verify that it is there, and also check in the Device Manager that that's the driver actually being used for the problem HDD.

So your board supports 48-bit LBA *and* you're using one of LLXX patched ESDI_506.PDR? Are you sure? Start a hexeditor and look inside the ESDI_506.PDR for the string "Enable48bitLBA!v1.1 by Litty" to double-check. If that's confirmed, then your issue shouldn't have anythining to do with the > 137GB limit.

Sure. This.

I've sorted it out! And it's a catch-22 situation. Turns out that, in july, while trying to disable a nagging prompt IE8 presents on reopening, every time it's killed or when it crashes, I disabled "Enable automatic crash recovery" as recorded in the "Auto-"go to homepage" in IE8... Is there a way to do it?" thread, which last post I quote below, for easy reference: And it worked OK for a while, then UOL made some "HTML Updates" to its pages and the crashes described in this thread began. However, when I re-enabled "automatic crash recovery", the crashes still happen, but IE8 recovers from them seamlessy, so they are imperceptible, unless one causes the machine to really slow down. Hence, there's more to the "Enable automatic crash recovery" setting than the nag prompt I was keen on disabling, and it's really not advisable to untick it. I guess it's best to put up with the occasional nag screen, than to use two browsers on a regular basis. @Joseph_sw: True enough. Proxomitron can solve it, but I'd have to identify all offending tags, by trial and error... In any case I'll look into it further, since I've been considering adding it to my setup for a long time already, and this may be a good time for it. Thanks for the suggestion.

2 quick questions: Does your BIOS support 48-bit LBA? Is the 250GB HDD SATA?

The Who - Baba O'Riley Now usually recognized as the CSI:NY opening/closing theme, it really *is* much more than that, being probably the best song ever created by the Who, which moreover features a wonderful short violin solo by Dave Arbus (East of Eden) for its unusual ending.

The 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT (ST32000641AS) still uses 512 bytes sectors, and seems to me to be a safe bet. It's a 7200 RPM, 1.82 TiB, SATA III HDD. There's no jumper setting for SATA I mode, however, so the controller, if SATA I, must support autonegociation.

Thanks a lot to both of you, MagicAndre1981 and Tripredacus! You rock! I did some more tests and I'm convinced that the issue is in IE8 itself, since navigating In-private with no add-ons lowers the probability of crashing IE8, but by no means avoids it entirely. And I do think Tripredacus is right in that some HTML, perhaps Edge is trigering it, because, up to now I've had problems only with UOL. So, the easiest solution would be to upgrade to IE9, but MS decided users of XP SP3 like me are not worthy... But it's OK. I've just added Opera 11.5 to my system, and now I can again browse the news without any crashes. Time permitting, I'll try to follow up and, with your help, debug it. But for the time being, the issue is duly worked around.

I liked to think that, by now, everybody was aware that using small partitions *cannot* workaround the 137 GB limit. I see it was wishful thinking, though. That said, I don't see why any given 2 TB HDD wouldn't work with Win 9x/ME, provided one has 48-lba support. Most 2 TB HDDs, if not all, still use 512 bytes sectors, don't they?

Try 138 cylinders. I've learned th hard way always to round up (not down) fractional numbers, when dealing with disk structures.

Way to go, larry and bphlpt! The beard is perfect IMO. But there's a snaky element I cannot properly identify that remained, starting just below the old man's shoulder and framing the top of "bphlpt" which now gives the impression of being a part of the old man's arm, which it's not. Maybe the result would be even betther if that snaky element were removed. So, here I am, meddling again... in the hopes of helping improve the image even further. As always, please feel free to ignore my comments.