100/120gb ide

[cdoublejj]

yeah, yeah, i know you've seen it before. i managed to install 98se to my 100gb with dual boot of xubuntu now i want to go full on windows 98se. wit both my Hitachi 100gb and my WD 120gb ide they both fail the surface scan at the same spot towards the end then i leave a weight on the F key and it "fixes" so many errors it gives up and installs any ways and when it does it's like it can't find the mbr. i also tried with a 10gb partition at the front of the drive, same thing. does 100gb count ans that special large hard disk install that require special steps?

[dencorso]

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.

[cdoublejj]

but, the games take 40gb alone. why would both drives fail exactly the same way with the same clusters? i ran short test on my hitachi with the hitachi drive tooks and it came up clean might have to try it again with the advanced test but, i'm not gonna just write it off as fail drives tha'd be ignorant.

[dencorso]

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.

[allen2]

You might also try to test them with the hard drive manufacturer tools (drive fitness and datalife guard) and do full surface test.

[cdoublejj]

i was thinking more along the line of it just having problems addressing blocks after a certain size, everything worked fine before i chkdisk and defragglered it. i know for a fact it worked with 40gb or 11gb ext3 file system at the end where it usually fails. see where i'm going here. instead of jumping straight to a conclusion lets think every possible out come first.

maybe i should just dual boot, it would give me a chance to see if grub can fix the problem if it does show up again at all with a second file system occupying the second part of the drive and gives me a chance for a better or lighter os for such old hardware. and if things do act up then possibly it could be a south bridge if my laptop even has one and i could run advanced tested and if thy fails the same i could try a proper reflow on my south bridge and see if that helps.

[cdoublejj]

well i've finally come back to this project again. it seems to me the only reason it worked before was because grub took care of the boot process.

[cdoublejj]

so basically the 98se install doesn't finish after initial reboot

EDIT: no it's not booting off the hdd after final reboot from the install.

Edited January 12, 2012 by cdoublejj

[submix8c]

You never did say what the hardware (motherboard/PC) was. It may help.

[cdoublejj]

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/modelContent.jsp?ct=SB&os=&category=&moid=1073833652&rpn=PS287U&modelFilter=2805-S503&selCategory=2756709&selFamily=1073768663

it is Toshiba 2805-s503 i'm trying to use a 120gb ide drive.

I have been running 98se for longest time on it. any who i have 120gb ide hdd in it and after the final boot in install (where it stops running off the cd and starts running off the hdd) it acts like nothing is there. it just sits there blinking "_" like the hdd is empty.

i've been through this a million times and very familiar with partitioning. i've tried a smaller part for the os only and what not double checked it was fat32 LBA blah blah.

my next step i guess is to try and get grub to find the needed files to make it boot. i've double checked it does indeed install files to the drive.

the s***ty part is that i did get it to work but, had forgotten to wipe the drive and so my root was full of all kinds of random stuff and the drive name was "WD passport" (portable hdd), so i launched part logic and cleared it out, and now it refuses to finish installing.

is there a file i manually load to kick start it? is it the file system i set up part logic/g parted? do i need to make it raw and let 98se installer partition/format it?

I'm using a later installer that doesn't need that dumb boot floppy it's all stream lined so to speak. Also before i ended up needing to reinstall i used to dual boot with linux with grub but, as i said before it installed to the FULL drive as it was with all the crap on it.

not to confuse you it is a different hdd than the one i dual booted on but, is of the same size and physically fit and also ide.

[allen2]

If the drive you installed w98 was used before (for linux for example) the mbr might still contains some stuff.

You should try to do:

- boot from the install cd in pure dos and do a fdisk /mbr

- install w98 as usual.

[cdoublejj]

it started with A: so...

A:FDISK /MBR

blinking "_"

A:C:

C:

C: FDISK /MBR

blinking "_"

C:D:

D:

D: FDISK /MBR

blinking "_"

D:setup

press enter to continue....

EDIT: and same thing, i think there is more to it than FDISK /MBR

I think if i could get stupid gparted to run i could setup an MBR.

Edited January 13, 2012 by cdoublejj

[buyerninety]

Surprized no-ones mentioned 'DBan' - running DBan to wipe that hard drive (you mentioned make,

but Not model ID) would remove ANYTHING on that drive (excepting damage area of course) that may

be interfering w/ W98's install process...DBan also gives a pretty comprehensive log file output if

anything is preventing it wiping clean any area of the drive.

Read Dban Warnings Carefully About How To Only Wipe The Desired Drive, personally I don't use it

unless ALL drives are disconnected (Hard, USB, Sandisk, etc except floppy or CD) except the 1 drive

I want to wipe. (Current vers are intended to run from a CD/DVD, versions 1.06 and back could fit on

and run from a floppy...mmmm... seems 1.06 and back are not downloadable from sites associated

w/ the author, looks like you may have to burn it to an optical disk then...)

After its wiped the drive, Fdisk & Format per normal, then install W98.

Incidently, you're installing W98 fm CD? might be better off installing W98 from a Hard Disk (and

a hellva lot faster) e.g.

http://www.inanis.net/blog/index.php/techie/install-windows-9598me-from-scratch/

.

EDIT - I take back the first statement- DBan won't wipe a Host Protected Area (HPA) (and won't check HPA presence/absence) >and won't wipe a Drive Configuration Overlay (DCO).<?. (CMRR Secure Erase {HDDerase}

ver 3.1 & later will check for HPA/DCO, and asserts it will attempt to wipe HPA/DCO [although my reading

of its documentation suggests it may not succeed if a user or master password to Unlock the drive is not

known].)

Edited January 15, 2012 by buyerninety

[submix8c]

DBAN wipes the drive including the MBR. That won't cure the problem.

You mentioned Grub as the MBR Boot Loader ... Grub doesn't require an Active Partition, it just "points" to the partition or partition's OS loader and transfers control to it. Is the Partition Primary and Active (FDISK/Set Partition Active)? I can't remember at the time (a little brain-weary) but I don't think Setup will set a preexisting partition active - only the OEMSETUP with no partitions will do that (AFAICR at the time).

edit - I take back the first statement. If you DBAN it and use OEMSETUP then it should work, but DBAN-ing it would be a waste of time as it will take a loooong time to run it since it clears the whole HDD to hex 0's.

Edited January 13, 2012 by submix8c

[jaclaz]

Surprized no-ones mentioned 'DBan' - running DBan to wipe that hard drive

Maybe because there is no need whatsoever to completely wipe the disk (and this will take some time).

Wiping the first 100 sectors is more than enough (and much faster) should something prevent a normal install, but I personally also doubt that even this smaller set of sectors actually *need* to be wiped at all, in this case just wiping the MBR (1 sector) would do.

JFYI, if you need to completely wipe a disk, CMRR Secure Erase is faster, as it uses the internal ATA commands:

http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml

@submix8c

Grub does whatever is told to do in menu.lst.

@cdoublejj

If you could make a post actually describing the issue you are having, which is NOT clear to me at all, it may help.

IF you boot from floppy *some* DOS and FDISK (NO switches) does work?

jaclaz