LoneCrusader

Ok, a couple of new developments. I ran ScanDisk on the drive, and got this error: I don't know what's with this image, it didn't look that way when I saved it Test was run on another Win98 System, that's why the drive letter different in pic. Since the error stated that the boot area was damaged or invalid, (and remembering what happened with the drive that started this thread), I canceled ScanDisk so we can investigate further before it gets modified. I tried some of the tools jaclaz listed, I was able to make an image of the drive, broken into 1999MB blocks with Partition Saving. It should be noted that Roadkil's Diskimage cannot break the image up into <4GB parts, it appeared to run normally, and claimed the image was complete, but it only created a 3.99GB file and apparently did not realize it had stopped writing. Haven't done anything else with the images as yet. As above, remembering the problems with the first drive, and the steps we took then, I put the drive back in XP and ran HDHacker on it. Here's the MBR and PBR output. KDT8GB_MBRPBR.zip

Checked them again, same result. I have both 98 and XP set to show all hidden/system files. Also the numbers seem too perfect... 4096 and 8192... I'm not up on this, but its almost like each OS is trying to use a different cluster size or sector size to read the filesystem.

Yes. I plan to get to the bottom of this somehow, these things are driving me crazy. (Off Topic Rant) I've always hated USB devices. I used Windows 95 forever, and loved it, and I hated anything that would not work in it. My little Windows 95 desktop ran anything and everything I wanted it to back in the day. I once bought an external CD burner that connected to the parallel printer port to avoid having to upgrade to 98 to use a USB one. Haha! Even after later having to upgrade to 98SE, I avoided buying ANY device that required USB up until about 8 months ago, when I discovered NUSB on here. And since then, with these weird problems, my opinion of USB devices has not improved much! (/Off Topic Rant) I've not done a lot of work with imaging other than what has been discussed here in the other threads. I'm all ears though. It might take me some time, just tell me what I need to do. I have PowerQuest DriveImage 2002, and I'm most familiar with it. I also have Partimage which I have used a little. Beyond that, I have a Clonezilla CD somewhere that I haven't used. I'll have a look around and see if there's anything else I haven't thought of. If you guys need me to use a specific program for anything, just say so. I have basically zero experience with Hex Editing. Not that I wouldn't like to learn. But I have UltraEdit-32 v11.20b and a very basic program called HexEdit on hand.

Did that back at the beginning of the thread. I have version 4.10.2223 of UHCD.SYS. The drive is recognized properly - no yellow exclamations or anything. Just a different space count than XP.

Ok, Ok, I won't give up on it yet. Time to test other tools I suppose. I think I'll probably use this method whenever I've tried out some more of jaclaz's recovery tools. Of course.. now I have another flash drive "problem" for you guys Just bought a new pair of Kingston 8GB Data Travelers. Ive been using one of them in an XP environment at college with no data problems so far. I decided I would insert the other (still blank) one to have a look at it and make sure that it was recognized properly. It was, and it shows up in both 98 & XP. However.... I happened to notice that they show a different "Used space" count in their General Properties tab in each OS. (Screenshots below) Could something like this be responsible for the problems that I had with the original 16GB drive? If so, what do I do to correct it before I lose more data?

BTW I agree on the ME thing, was just using it as an example. If one created a special always visible boot partition for System Commander, (as you said^) this is completely true. For the record though, you could have System Commander hide it's own partition whenever you choose one of your OS'es from the menu, thereby allowing each Windows to see its system partition as C: on boot. This would eliminate having to install System Commander to one of the Windows partitions (I know you mentioned you preferred installing from/to DOS) and also possibly eliminate some of the quirky errors/problems that have been mentioned about System Commander (especially when making backup images and/or cloning drives/partitions, because each Windows install would be "standard" so to speak). The only thing you would be giving up is one primary partition, which isn't a big issue if you're using several logicals.

Although arranged differently, your setup still retains (IMO) the most important things. No files from one OS in the partition of another, and each OS is independent and does not require another OS or the partition/boot sector thereof to run. I prefer putting the systems in partitions in chronological order (except I would install ME before 2K), and I don't like giving in to 2K/XP demanding to take over the first primary partition, whether installed there or putting their boot files there. I guess I have a touch of OCD haha

Ok, I just successfully finished restoring my Windows 98 (w/ System Commander) partition to another hard drive with Partimage on the SystemRescueCD. While successful, it was a bit tricky. Here's the process and my results/conclusions: 1. I do not recommend the SystemRescueCD / Partimage method if you do not have some basic Linux experience, because you must be familiar with using the command line to mount the partition/device where your image is stored so that Partimage can see it. 2. Partimage was unable to see the HDD I was attempting to restore the image to until I created a partition on it - Partimage apparently does not restore to unallocated space like DriveImage. However, once I created a partition for it to restore to, the process started successfully. 3. During the process, Partimage displayed several CRC errors, but when told to continue anyway, it finished the operation. 4. Upon completion by Partimage, an error symbol was displayed beside the partition in GParted (Which I had used to create the blank partition to restore to.) I used GParted to scan the partition for errors, and to expand the file system to fit the partition (which was slightly larger than the original imaged partition.) This did not eliminate the error symbol, but I exited the SystemRescueCD and restarted with my System Commander CD. 5. Using the System Commander CD, I had to manually set the partition where the image was restored as active, and while there I used the Verify Partition tool, and it returned no errors. Upon reboot, the System Commander boot menu did not appear, but Windows 98 loaded normally. 6. Windows 98 functioned normally, however I had to reinstall System Commander. I told it to transfer the settings from the previous install to the new one, and upon reboot I got a notice about updating saved boot sectors. I clicked OK, and then everything was back to normal. So the process was successful, but as you can see it was a little tricky and required some patience. I must say that I find your system of allowing all the operating systems to see one another and having all these partitions visible at once very bizarre. I begin to wonder if allowing all of these systems to see one another and access each other's partitions is not contributing in some way to the problems you were experiencing, i.e., back to what jaclaz was talking about with different programs making different assumptions, in this case different operating systems making different assumptions and possibly modifying the boot area of another OS's partition. Different versions of Windows do not play nicely together, each newer version assumes that it is better than an older version and will sometimes try to "improve" it. For example, if you had a HDD with 2 primary partitions (1)C and (2)D, and you had Windows 98 installed on C, and then installed XP into D, allowing it to see Windows 98's partition as C, and to place its boot.ini, ntldr, and so forth in C, then it's possible that when you restore an image of C, the imaging program or System Commander may make the wrong assumptions about the operating system in that partition. The partition would contain the Windows 98 system, but have an XP style boot sector. Here is a link to the best multibooting information resource I ever found on the net, and I use most of these principles in setting up my systems. Understanding Multibooting by Dan Goodell. And here is a quote from the Principles page of that site illustrating what I was saying above: IMHO, it is far far simpler to hide each system from one another and have a shared partition for data that does not contain an OS. If you need to work on the files of one system with another, you can always manually unhide the partition you need to work on from the OS you want to work with using System Commander. Make sure 98 is in the first partition and use 98 for this as it assigns drive letters on each boot and won't get confused like XP. If you don't like this, or need to work on 98 from another system, try using a Linux Live CD like Knoppix, or maybe even loading a system from a flash drive if that's your thing. But it's whatever works for you.

V 8.11 Same here, I mainly only use XP for some games that require it. Also posted a minute ago in your other thread. ____________________________________________________________________ EDIT 1-14-10: Thanks to all those who replied to this thread. I have determined that the problem seems to be something internal with DriveImage and not with the Windows XP partition. Successfully imaged the partition with another program. For reference, I will link to the related thread for the process I used.

Most of this discussion has gone beyond my experience, however I believe jaclaz is on the right track when he said most of this problem is caused by the assumptions of all the different programs involved. I saw that you tested Clonezilla, recommended in the other thread. If I remember correctly, I think it is based on Partimage, the program that I used on the SystemRescueCd to create images of my partitions. If I get an opportunity, I will try restoring my Windows 98 (System Commander) partition to another hard drive and see if it works. You probably saw where I mentioned this on the other thread, but the only problem that I ever had with System Commander was that it could not hide logical partitions from one another. I had a situation where I had an extended partition with two logicals in it, one for Win2K and the other for WinXP. System Commander was unable to hide the 1st logical partition from Windows XP, so XP assigned the Win2K partition drive letter C and then failed to finish booting. I solved this by using BootIt NG, which can hide logicals. I ended up with 24 operating systems on that machine There seem to be a lot of bizarre problems mentioned here involving errors/quirks with System Commander. Other than the one mentioned above, I have never had a problem with it. However, I probably should note that I only use System Commander for three things: 1. To manually create & format partitions 2. To hide each OS from one another (at least during each install process, can always unhide later if necessary) 3. As a boot loader. I do not use any of it's "wizards" etc. Using version 8.11.

I ran an experiment and got the same result. However, you do not need special software to read a DVD in DOS, everything you need is on the Windows 98 Boot Disk. I can use my Windows 98 Boot Disk, choose "Start computer with CDROM support," and whenever it loads the drivers I can read a DVD with no problems. But I'm not sure how to get Windows to load the same things whenever you restart in DOS mode.

Ok, time to return to this problem... After losing power for 10 days throughout Christmas, and twice going through ~12GB of data recovered from the disk in search of less than ~10MB of data (including over 3,000 text files!) PhotoRec managed to find most of the files that I needed back, but I lost my edited scripts for KDE and such. At least it recovered the graphics, text files can be rewritten. I think I have recovered everything I can from the drive, so now it's time to repartition and reformat. jaclaz, I remember you posted a link earlier to some tools for achieving this, just wondered if anyone had a specific recommendation. I'd prefer something that runs in 98 if possible, but I can use XP if I must. Also.. is there a way to do a thorough "test" on a flash drive? I took a look at some of the reviews on this drive at Newegg where I ordered it from, and it seems that this particular model of Data Traveler seems to have more problems than others. (I know reviews can be subjective, but it's got me wondering.) @jaclaz A special thanks for sending me to the PhotoRec/TestDisk site, because it's been more useful than I ever imagined (I think you saw my post in the Windows XP forum)

Hello Multibooter! I've been using System Commander for several years now, and have never had any problems with it whatsoever, except one. (It's unable to hide logical partitions - solved by using BootIt NG on that one system.) I've used DriveImage to create images of several partitions, both Win98 and WinXP, and never encountered this before. The 98 partitions had System Commander installed to them, and they copied fine. I have the system in question up and running again, and I tried using Partimage on the SystemRescueCd which I am using to image the Linux partition. Partimage created an image of the screwy Windows XP partition and the Windows 98 (with System Commander) partition without any errors. So my conclusion is that problem is not System Commander, it seems to be DriveImage. I have been impressed with Partimage so far, but I haven't actually tested restoring a partition with it yet. I hide them from each other because I don't want Windows XP invading my Windows 98 partition with its files. But seriously though, I know what you mean, I unhide the Windows XP partition from 98 if I need to work on it sometimes, and Linux sees all the partitions whether System Commander hides them or not.

Well, here goes for my first post in the XP forum, heh Ok... I am setting up a custom built system for a friend of mine, and I am having a very strange error when attempting to create a disk image. I have set up several systems like this one before, and never had this problem. The system is multi-boot, Windows 98SE, Windows XP Pro, and OpenSUSE 11, managed by VCom System Commander. There are two hard drives, configured like this: Disk 1 Partition 1 - FAT32 - Windows 98SE (System Commander installed to this partition) Disk 1 Partition 2 - FAT32 - Windows XP Pro Disk 1 Partition 3 - EXT3 - OpenSUSE 11 Disk 2 Partition 1 - FAT32 - Windows 98SE Storage (Drive D) Disk 2 Partition 2 - FAT32 - Windows XP Pro Storage (Drive D) Disk 2 Partition 3 - FAT32 - Shared between all 3 operating systems All partitions were created and formatted with System Commander. All systems are independent of and hidden from one another. (XP does not know 98 exists) I have spent many hours getting all of this set up, installing drivers, software, etc etc, and now I am attempting to create disk images of these systems for backup, using DriveImage for the Windows partitions and PartImage for the Linux system. All systems are up and running fine, and I have had no problems whatsoever booting any of the three, until I try to create an image of the XP partition. DriveImage creates an image of the Windows 98 partition without problems, but whenever I try to create an image of the XP partition, I get an error saying that the boot sector contains incorrect data (Dont remember the exact wording of that error). Then, when I exit DriveImage, the ENTIRE partition table for BOTH hard drives completely disappears. Both drives have no partitions defined at all. When this happened the first time, I thought all of my work was down the drain, but I used TestDisk to check the drives, and managed to recover all of the partitions. TestDisk found corrupted boot sectors on the XP system partition (Disk 1 Part 2) and the XP storage partition (Disk 2 Part 2), but I was able to use the backup boot sector for each and rewrite the partition table on both drives. Upon restart, Windows 98 booted normally, and I was able to reinitialize System Commander. But when I tried to boot Windows XP, it gave an error saying "select proper boot device" (exact wording??). So I used the Recovery Console "fixboot" to write a new boot sector for the XP partition, and then everything went back to normal. I was able to boot and use all 3 systems. So I tried creating an image of the XP partition with DriveImage again... and the exact same thing happened a second time. The partition table of both drives completely disappeared. So I went in with TestDisk again, exact same process as before, and recovered everything. Had to rewrite the XP partition boot sector again, and now everything is back up and working. Is there some way I can fix whatever is wrong with the XP partition? The OS boots and operates fine, but whenever I try to make a backup image, DriveImage claims there is incorrect data in the boot sector of that partition, even though the system exhibits no problems and I have rewritten a new boot sector to it twice from the Recovery Console. I really don't want to have to spend hours setting all this up again.. any ideas?

Well I suppose it's time to get back to the problem at hand, because now it's more complicated. A few minutes ago, I copied all of the data (excluding one folder) from my flash drive to a Windows XP machine so I could burn it to a CD or put it back on the drive once this problem is fixed. The folder I excluded contained a small handful of files from an openSUSE 11 Linux installation. There were a couple of graphics, about 3 screenshots, one text document, a backup of bookmarks.html from Firefox, and about six configuration files (customizing KDE, auto login, etc). I planned to copy these files to a temporary folder on a linux machine and then put them back on the drive when fixed. Now all but two of the files on the flash drive have disappeared. I did not even access this folder when I was copying the others to XP, so I know I did not accidentally delete them. Is there a way to recover them? And whether there is or not, this drive is destined for a repartition and reformat!

Well it doesn't look too promising, does it? Is it possible a later version of these functions could be implemented with KernelEx or a similar compatiblity-layer type application, thereby bypassing the need to patch a bunch of different software? Just trying to think logically, I have no coding or programming experience, so if I say something stupid please bear with me.

Hello BeatZero, always glad to see new members in the Windows 98 community. I've not had an opportunity to look at your project yet, but I find it very interesting, and I hope you get it perfected. I actually did some reading up on Windows 98 Live CD's a few weeks ago, but I haven't had the time to even attempt it yet and I have no experience with such things. Here's a link to a couple of the pages I looked at, you may have already seen them or they may not help you, but they're relevant to the topic at hand so they may help someone else. Win98LiveCD1 [link removed] I was thinking about trying my hand at making my own Win98 Live DVD. I know someone's going to ask "why DVD" so I'll go ahead and explain. The size of the image/install doesn't matter to me, in fact, I'd rather have the entire system, with as many drivers, updates, tools & applications as possible. I'd prefer to have a full featured system ready to do anything I want whenever I load it up (like KNOPPIX, etc). (I know this would not be a good setup for older systems, but most of my hardware is Pentium 4 Northwood or Prescott ready) But anyhow, best of luck, and welcome!

You are WRONG. Ext2 is NOT journaled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2 Ext3 can be read as "journaled Ext2": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3 jaclaz Ah, stupid of me. I already knew that ext3 was journaled, and when I was posting that I looked too quickly at the beginning of that ext2 Wikipedia page and saw "journaling file system" and then didn't read the rest. My apologies dencorso.

Yep, that's the question. Patching the FAT32 filesystem sounds like a good idea if it's possible, however I can see how this might be a somewhat awkward process if one had to install the patched VFAT.VXD on each and every machine (And this would no doubt include 2K/XP/Vista/Win7 machines as well I assume) that he wanted to be able to write a 4GB+ file to or use a FAT32 formatted flash disk in for said purpose. Is there a possiblility of writing a Windows 98 driver for exFAT? I have seen it mentioned on here before, not sure of the legalities involved, but provided it's not illegal I think it would be a very useful utility. EDIT: Never mind, I see on Wikipedia that Microsoft is still charging a licensing fee for exFAT implementations.

Most (someone correct me if I'm wrong) Linux file systems are journaling file systems - including ext2, so that would just lead back to the same problem as NTFS in this situation.

Whenever I'm finished with my flash drive at college this week I think I may just reformat it, from what you all are telling me it seems to have some bizarre settings. @rloew - While you're here I'd appreciate your input on the question I asked jaclaz in the other thread.

I read over those threads, good useful info! I have a question though - is there a non-journaling file system that can be used to format a flash disk that can support files larger than 4GB, and still be read by Windows 98? I saw someone mention/suggest formatting disks with UDF in another thread, but I am unfamiliar with it. It would be handy to have such a filesystem, that way it would be possible to save a DVD image on a flash drive (even if you were only going to actually USE it on an XP/NTFS system) but still have access to any other smaller files on the flash disk in Windows 98.

Ok Guys, thanks for all your help so far. I'm going to be needing my flash drive at college the next couple of days, and it's all a WinXP environment there, so I'm not going to run any more experiments just yet. As soon as that's over, Ill resume the quest to figure out what's going on with it. @jaclaz I have a question that's semi-related to this, but probably more appropriate in this thread. Will post there. Flash Drives Wearing Out ?

Ok, I used HDHacker and got the Logical Drive no problem. (Text output had Kingston in it). The Physical Drive output I'm not 100% sure of, I couldn't select it by drive letter or type, just had numbers 0-9. Numbers 0, 1, 2 returned a sector output. The first one (0) was obviously my primary hdd because i saw some text in the output that obviously was my boot loader. The second (1) I assumed to be my second hdd, and the third (2) output must be the flash drive. Hope this is what you needed. MBRPBR.zip

Ok, tried the KB240075 UHCD.SYS hotfix, didn't change anything. Here's the readout from ChipGenius: While in XP to run ChipGenius, I verified again that the drive was read/writable in XP, no data loss or problems of any kind. I remember when I first put the new blank drive in Win 98, it showed up with 14.(xxx something) GB free, so I assumed there wouldn't be any problems, guess I was wrong.