Removing EZ-BIOS overlay

[KH]

I have a computer with an LBA capable BIOS. The hard drive, however, has an
EZ-BIOS overlay. I have attempted to remove this overlay using RESQDISK
and the procedure below. The EZ-BIOS message still showa on boot and Fdisk
still shows non-Dos partitions. I see no change in the code when between
SeeThru On or Off and the EZ.MBR and FDISK.MBR files I saved are identical.
Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong and/or what the right procedure is
for the RESQDISK utility?

Thanks,
Karl

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The method described below is how to convert an EZ drive MBR (beware: don't
try this with Disk Manager!) to standard FDISK's, with RESQDISK. The method
is reliable and safe, provided it's conducted exactly as described below:

- Make a boot floppy by inserting a formatted floppy to A: and running SYS
A: (or FORMAT A: /U /S).

- Download http://resq.co.il/download/resq.exe and self-extract all files to
the floppy by running RESQ.EXE after the download completed.

- Let the hard drive, still with EZ-bios, to self-boot into 'command prompt'
(DOS) mode.

- Insert the floppy just prepared, leave it write enabled, and change to A:

- From A:, start RESQDISK.EXE, and save a copy of both the EZ (true) MBR,
and the Int 13 (stealthed) one, as follows. The two MBR image files only
serve for backup, in case things turn sour. You can then revert to the EZ
MBR and try again.

Place the RESQDISK viewer on sector 0/0/1, the MBR, by pressing the home
key.

With seethru engaged (the SeeThru button is green), press ^E, then 'to
file', and name the file 'EZ.MBR'.

Toggle seethru off with F9 (the indicator will turn red), press ^E, 'to
file' and name the file 'FDISK.MBR'.

Let's go now for the real thing.

- Place RESQDISK on sector 0/0/1, and SeeThru to 'off' (button is red). Load
the stealthed int 13 MBR to memory (^E, then 'read'), toggle now SeeThru to
ON (button is green), and write the sector to disk (^E, then 'write').
Reboot the disk et voila.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

I have a computer with an LBA capable BIOS.

Practically all BIOSes since '93 are "LBA capable", still, some can only access
up to 8 GB drives, others go to 32 GB. Check that your BIOS does detect the
drive's true capacity. If it does, then you may convert the EZ boot manager to
standard MBR.

The hard drive, however, has an
EZ-BIOS overlay. I have attempted to remove this overlay using RESQDISK
and the procedure below. The EZ-BIOS message still showa on boot and Fdisk
still shows non-Dos partitions.

The EZ bios message on startup indicates that the partition loader wasn't
overwritten. The non-DOS partition indicates that the partition table wasn't
rebuilt properly. IOW, you didn't run the procedure properly.

I see no change in the code when between
SeeThru On or Off and the EZ.MBR and FDISK.MBR files I saved are identical.

Confirms my suspicion.

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong and/or what the right procedure is
for the RESQDISK utility?

Any reason why to not ask the producer? ;-)

Note: The procedure below will only work if you didn't mess yet with the
EZ-bios overlay (i.e. the drive DOES boot with the overlay and all partitions /
files are accessible). In case you botched the conversion and EZ-bios doesn't
load anymore, then the conversion with RESQDISK is still possible, but through a
different procedure.

Regards, Zvi

 

[KH]

Hi Zvi,

OK, so I'm asking the producer. What is the modified procedure?

Thanks,
Karl

 

[Zvi Netiv]

Hi Zvi,

OK, so I'm asking the producer. What is the modified procedure?

I think capital punishment should be reinstated for top posters. ;-) What
modified procedure?

Regards

 

[Tod]

Personally, I would delete all partitions and Format/MBR the drive.
Then build new partitions.
This of course would also delete any programs or data on the drive.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

Personally, I would delete all partitions and Format/MBR the drive.
Then build new partitions.
This of course would also delete any programs or data on the drive.

For that advice, Karl wouldn't need asking.

 

[KH]

Practically all BIOSes since '93 are "LBA capable", still, some can only access
up to 8 GB drives, others go to 32 GB. Check that your BIOS does detect the
drive's true capacity. If it does, then you may convert the EZ boot manager to
standard MBR.


The EZ bios message on startup indicates that the partition loader wasn't
overwritten. The non-DOS partition indicates that the partition table wasn't
rebuilt properly. IOW, you didn't run the procedure properly.
identical.

Confirms my suspicion.


Any reason why to not ask the producer? ;-)

Note: The procedure below will only work if you didn't mess yet with the
EZ-bios overlay (i.e. the drive DOES boot with the overlay and all partitions /
files are accessible). In case you botched the conversion and EZ-bios doesn't
load anymore, then the conversion with RESQDISK is still possible, but through a
different procedure.

Sorry about the top post.
OK, so I'm asking the producer. What is the modified procedure?

 

[Zvi Netiv]

There was a question here, although not terminated with a question mark: Does
your BIOS detect the drive to its true capacity?

I din't ask this in my previous post, so I'll do it now: What is the exact
phrasing of the "EZ-BIOS message" and when do you see it (after what stage in
the boot sequence, and before which)?

You didn't answer this one: Can you access your partitions / directories / files
after booting from floppy *without the overlay*?

Sorry about the top post.

Top posting isn't the problem, it's the attitude conveyed by that bothers me.
Since you chose to ask for help on a public forum, then do it in a way that will
let others benefit too, just as you did from my post that you brought in yours.

OK, so I'm asking the producer. What is the modified procedure?

The procedure to remove or convert the EZ-drive overlay depends on the exact
condition of the drive and on details you do not provide information about.
Answer my questions and I'll explain what to do.

Regards, Zvi

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Sorry about the top post.

We don't believe a word of that, now that you started wrecking the quoting too.

OK, so I'm asking the producer. What is the modified procedure?

What 'modified' procedure?

[snip]

 

[KH]

There was a question here, although not terminated with a question mark: Does
your BIOS detect the drive to its true capacity?

Very early in the start up it identifies the make, model and capacity of the
hard drive correctly.

I din't ask this in my previous post, so I'll do it now: What is the exact
phrasing of the "EZ-BIOS message" and when do you see it (after what stage in
the boot sequence, and before which)?

EZ-BIOS: Initializing
EZ-BIOS: Hold down CTRL key for Status Screen or to boot from floppy.
EZ-BIOS: Continuing startup ...

You didn't answer this one: Can you access your partitions / directories / files
after booting from floppy *without the overlay*?

When I boot from a floppy, yes for the Primary partition, but not for the
Extension or the Slave drive. These are all available from a normal boot.
The Slave is not overlayed.

Top posting isn't the problem, it's the attitude conveyed by that bothers me.
Since you chose to ask for help on a public forum, then do it in a way that will
let others benefit too, just as you did from my post that you brought in

yours.

Sorry! I did not mean to show/have a poor attitude. I appreciate the help
from tools like RESQDISK. I really appreciate the help available from news
groups. I always use them when I have problems, which is frequently. And
when people come to me for help, I usually point them to an appropriate
newsgroup.

The procedure to remove or convert the EZ-drive overlay depends on the exact
condition of the drive and on details you do not provide information about.
Answer my questions and I'll explain what to do.

Regards, Zvi

Thanks again,

Karl

 

[Zvi Netiv]

Very early in the start up it identifies the make, model and capacity of the
hard drive correctly.

Now there is a slave drive too, about which you didn't say anything in previous
posts. Does the BIOS detect the slave with the correct capacity too? It's
possible that the EZ-drive overlay was necessary because of the slave, if its
capacity exceeds the BIOS handling capacity.

EZ-BIOS: Initializing
EZ-BIOS: Hold down CTRL key for Status Screen or to boot from floppy.
EZ-BIOS: Continuing startup ...

Your EZ-drive overlay is intact and your running of the RESQDISK procedure did
nothing to the overlay, probably for the following reason: You ran the
procedure from a Windows dropped command shell, instead from pure DOS, after
booting of the RESQ floppy, as instructed!

When I boot from a floppy, yes for the Primary partition, but not for the
Extension or the Slave drive. These are all available from a normal boot.
The Slave is not overlayed.

Both drives use the overlay, for mounting the extended partition on the first
drive, and for accessing the entire second drive. Apparently, the type of the
single partition on the slave is 55h which is interpreted only by the EZ
overlay.

Sorry! I did not mean to show/have a poor attitude. I appreciate the help
from tools like RESQDISK. I really appreciate the help available from news
groups. I always use them when I have problems, which is frequently. And
when people come to me for help, I usually point them to an appropriate
newsgroup.

If so, then make also an effort to keep your follow up readable, by not breaking
the lines / paragraphs of quoted text (check your word-wrap settiing as well as
right margin).

Back to your original question:

The picture now is quite different from the one that you gave in the original
post. We now know that you have two drives, both use the boot overlay. We
don't yet know if your BIOS supports the full capacity of the slave drive. We
also don't know the details of the first hard drive configuration (why is the
extended partition type an EZ-drive one?). Last thing, we know that the EZ-bios
overlay is functioning properly and no damage was done to it by your
improvising.

Before losing your data through careless manipulation, make first sure that your
BIOS supports the second drive to its full capacity. Even if it does, then I
recommend that you think twice before removing the EZ-bios overlay since your
system functions properly with it. If you insist on removing the EZ-bios
overlay, then first backup your important data in case things turn sour in the
conversion.

You didn't say a word about the installed OS either, thus I'll assume Win98/ME
on FAT-32 partitions. If any of the above assumptions is incorrect, then DON'T
proceed.

Here goes ... and don't deviate from the following instructions:

- First, make a bootable RESQ floppy on a Windows 98 or ME PC, as instructed in
the RESQ welcome message.

- Boot of the RESQ floppy *without letting the overlay taking control*. If you
can see the "EZ-BIOS: Initializing" message then you aren't booting properly.

- When at the A: prompt, run RESQDISK /REBUILD /FAT32 /2 This will create a
new partition table and MBR for the *second* drive. Let RESQDISK write the new
MBR to disk 2.

- Repeat the procedure for the first drive by running RESQDISK /REBUILD /FAT32
/1 from the A: prompt. There is no need to reboot between the previous step
and this one. Pay attention to what RESQDISK finds when searching for existing
partitions on disk 1. Accept *only* the first extended partition it finds and
ignore the rest (on condition that the rest are all covered in extended
partition table found, in case the extended partition is subdivided into more
than one partition).

- Reboot the PC after having completed the previous step. The PC should now
boot from its own hard drive, and all partitions should be accessible.

- Finally, after everything works, run the CleanTrackZero utility from
www.resq.co.il/download/cleantrk.exe CleanTrack will clear all traces of the
overlay residual (inert) code from both drives. This step is necessary only to
let software like Ghost and Partition Magic to operate on the drives (the
EZ-bios residual code on track 0 confuses these applications and causes them to
abort. CleanTrack0 can run under Windows 9x/ME, no need to boot to DOS for
that.

Regards, Zvi

 

[KH]

Now there is a slave drive too, about which you didn't say anything in previous
posts. Does the BIOS detect the slave with the correct capacity too? It's
possible that the EZ-drive overlay was necessary because of the slave, if its
capacity exceeds the BIOS handling capacity.


Your EZ-drive overlay is intact and your running of the RESQDISK procedure did
nothing to the overlay, probably for the following reason: You ran the
procedure from a Windows dropped command shell, instead from pure DOS, after
booting of the RESQ floppy, as instructed!


Both drives use the overlay, for mounting the extended partition on the first
drive, and for accessing the entire second drive. Apparently, the type of the
single partition on the slave is 55h which is interpreted only by the EZ
overlay.


If so, then make also an effort to keep your follow up readable, by not breaking
the lines / paragraphs of quoted text (check your word-wrap settiing as well as
right margin).

Back to your original question:

The picture now is quite different from the one that you gave in the original
post. We now know that you have two drives, both use the boot overlay. We
don't yet know if your BIOS supports the full capacity of the slave drive. We
also don't know the details of the first hard drive configuration (why is the
extended partition type an EZ-drive one?). Last thing, we know that the EZ-bios
overlay is functioning properly and no damage was done to it by your
improvising.

Before losing your data through careless manipulation, make first sure that your
BIOS supports the second drive to its full capacity. Even if it does, then I
recommend that you think twice before removing the EZ-bios overlay since your
system functions properly with it. If you insist on removing the EZ-bios
overlay, then first backup your important data in case things turn sour in the
conversion.

You didn't say a word about the installed OS either, thus I'll assume Win98/ME
on FAT-32 partitions. If any of the above assumptions is incorrect, then DON'T
proceed.

Let me start over:

1. The OS is W95 and both drives are FAT 16.

2. There are two drives. FDISK calls drive 1 Non-DOS and drive 2 DOS.
EZ-BIOS calls drive 1 EZ-BIOS and drive 2 ROM BIOS. The computer boots just
fine with drive 2 unplugged so I can do that if it would make it simpler.
The capacity of both drives is recognized and supported by the BIOS. I have
entered the Cyl., Hds. and Sect. for both drives in the BIOS. As I said
above, the correct make, model and size are displayed during the startup.

3. This is an 8 year old computer I am trying to reserect for a learning
Linux box. I have been advised by my Linux friends that the DDO structure
is a bad idea, so I am trying to get rid of it. I could Just dump it and
all the data on the disk with little lost, but I was hoping to learn
something about DDO in the process. If it is too complicated to explain,
then maybe we should forget the whole thing.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

[snip]

Your EZ-drive overlay is intact and your running of the RESQDISK procedure did
nothing to the overlay, probably for the following reason: You ran the
procedure from a Windows dropped command shell, instead from pure DOS, after
booting of the RESQ floppy, as instructed!


Both drives use the overlay, for mounting the extended partition on the first
drive, and for accessing the entire second drive. Apparently, the type of the
single partition on the slave is 55h which is interpreted only by the EZ
overlay.

[snip]

The picture now is quite different from the one that you gave in the original
post. We now know that you have two drives, both use the boot overlay. We
don't yet know if your BIOS supports the full capacity of the slave drive. We
also don't know the details of the first hard drive configuration (why is the
extended partition type an EZ-drive one?). Last thing, we know that the EZ-bios
overlay is functioning properly and no damage was done to it by your improvising.

Before losing your data through careless manipulation, make first sure that your
BIOS supports the second drive to its full capacity. Even if it does, then I
recommend that you think twice before removing the EZ-bios overlay since your
system functions properly with it. If you insist on removing the EZ-bios
overlay, then first backup your important data in case things turn sour in the
conversion.

You didn't say a word about the installed OS either, thus I'll assume Win98/ME
on FAT-32 partitions. If any of the above assumptions is incorrect, then DON'T
proceed.

Let me start over:

This is where you should have started in your first post.

1. The OS is W95 and both drives are FAT 16.

Reminds an anecdote from the days of the old Soviet regime. Propaganda claimed
that cars were given for free in Moscow. The true story was that it wasn't
Moscow but Rome, not cars but bicycles, and they weren't given for free, you had
to steal them! Except these minor discrepancies, all other details were
correct. ;-)

2. There are two drives. FDISK calls drive 1 Non-DOS and drive 2 DOS.
EZ-BIOS calls drive 1 EZ-BIOS and drive 2 ROM BIOS. The computer boots just
fine with drive 2 unplugged so I can do that if it would make it simpler.

The above doesn't concur with your statement in a previous post that the second
drive is inaccessible when booting from external boot, without the overlay.

The capacity of both drives is recognized and supported by the BIOS. I have
entered the Cyl., Hds. and Sect. for both drives in the BIOS. As I said
above, the correct make, model and size are displayed during the startup.

3. This is an 8 year old computer

I had a handful of '96 - '97 boards (various Octek boards from Rhino 6 to 10,
with Award BIOS). They were all limited to handle up to 8 GB drives. Yet since
you were running Win95 on FAT-16, then your partitions are limited to 2.1 GB.
The second drive, with its single partition, couldn't be larger than 2.1 GB. I
doubt that the first drive is over 8 GB, as it would take more than four FAT-16
partitions of 2.1 GB to reach that size.

I am trying to reserect for a learning
Linux box. I have been advised by my Linux friends that the DDO structure
is a bad idea, so I am trying to get rid of it. I could Just dump it and
all the data on the disk with little lost, but I was hoping to learn
something about DDO in the process. If it is too complicated to explain,
then maybe we should forget the whole thing.

Resetting the drives to blank state is easy, just run RESQDISK /KILL /1 after
booting of the RESQ floppy for the first drive, and the same, but this time with
/2 for the second drive. Running CleanTrack0 (below) will clear track 0 from
overlay residual code.

If you wish to keep the data then the procedure is the same as in my previous
post, but without the /FAT32 argument, as below.

Regards, Zvi