booting from win98 boot disk and seeing all my Hard drives

[dwake]

My Windows 2000 pro installation has gone bad so I am booting from a
Win98 boot disk into dos. I can see my C drive, but not my other
rather large (100 gig) hard drive (E. I am thinking that my Win98
boot disk needs a device driver for my Ultra66 (Promise Tech)
controller?

I have downloaded the drivers for the Ultra66 from their website, but
can't figure out which win98 file to put on the floppy. Also, I
probably need to put a command in an autoexec.bat file or a config.sys
file?

If I can boot up into dos and see both drives, then I can copy the
contents of C: to E: with ease. Then I won't lose any of the data
when I do a clean reinstallation of windows 2000 professional.

Any ideas, anyone?

 

[Zvi Netiv]

My Windows 2000 pro installation has gone bad so I am booting from a
Win98 boot disk into dos. I can see my C drive, but not my other
rather large (100 gig) hard drive (E. I am thinking that my Win98
boot disk needs a device driver for my Ultra66 (Promise Tech)
controller?

Since you have Win 2000 then the large partition was probably formatted as NTFS.
C: must be FAT-32 (or plain FAT) if you can see it from a Win98 boot. Windows
98 can't access NTFS, only with a special driver, like NTFSPRO from
www.winternals.com, and it's very expensive.

I have downloaded the drivers for the Ultra66 from their website, but
can't figure out which win98 file to put on the floppy. Also, I
probably need to put a command in an autoexec.bat file or a config.sys
file?

Your Ultra66 is not the problem.

If I can boot up into dos and see both drives, then I can copy the
contents of C: to E: with ease. Then I won't lose any of the data
when I do a clean reinstallation of windows 2000 professional.

Winternals have a read-only free driver, NTFSDOS, for reading NTFS from DOS.
But you won't be able to write to. The read-write version is rather expensive
and without it, you won't be able to copy from FAT-32 to NTFS.

Any ideas, anyone?

Repair the current Win2000 installation rather than restarting a clean one.

Regards, Zvi

 

[Andy]

Install Windows 2000 on the E: drive. This will allow you to copy
stuff from C: to E:. Then reinstall Windows 2000 to C:. Finally delete
Windows 2000 from E:.

 

[dwake]

Since you have Win 2000 then the large partition was probably formatted as NTFS.
C: must be FAT-32 (or plain FAT) if you can see it from a Win98 boot. Windows
98 can't access NTFS, only with a special driver, like NTFSPRO from
www.winternals.com, and it's very expensive.


Your Ultra66 is not the problem.


Winternals have a read-only free driver, NTFSDOS, for reading NTFS from DOS.
But you won't be able to write to. The read-write version is rather expensive
and without it, you won't be able to copy from FAT-32 to NTFS.


Repair the current Win2000 installation rather than restarting a clean one.

Regards, Zvi

hmm . . . I am stymied on the repair. Recovery console won't accept
the Administrator password that I know is correct. And I have no
Emergency Repair disk.

A reinstallation of win2k over the current installation I have read
might cause more problems especially since I was almost completely
current with upgrades (up through sp3). So I was wanting to get some
valuable data copied before attempting the reinstallation. So now I
need to get about 10 gig of data with floppies?? What about hooking
up another device (a smaller hard drive, that will format in fat32)
and doing the tranfer that way. I am certainly willing to spend at
least $100 to get the data without wasting 2 weeks of my life.

Thanks for your info and perspective.

 

[J.Clarke]

On 8 Jul 2003 22:16:12 -0700

hmm . . . I am stymied on the repair. Recovery console won't accept
the Administrator password that I know is correct. And I have no
Emergency Repair disk.

A reinstallation of win2k over the current installation I have read
might cause more problems especially since I was almost completely
current with upgrades (up through sp3). So I was wanting to get some
valuable data copied before attempting the reinstallation. So now I
need to get about 10 gig of data with floppies?? What about hooking
up another device (a smaller hard drive, that will format in fat32)
and doing the tranfer that way. I am certainly willing to spend at
least $100 to get the data without wasting 2 weeks of my life.

Install another copy of Windows 2000 in a different directory, use that
to do your backup, then do your reinstallation.

 

[Zvi Netiv]

hmm . . . I am stymied on the repair. Recovery console won't accept
the Administrator password that I know is correct. And I have no
Emergency Repair disk.

A reinstallation of win2k over the current installation I have read
might cause more problems especially since I was almost completely
current with upgrades (up through sp3). So I was wanting to get some
valuable data copied before attempting the reinstallation. So now I
need to get about 10 gig of data with floppies?? What about hooking
up another device (a smaller hard drive, that will format in fat32)
and doing the tranfer that way. I am certainly willing to spend at
least $100 to get the data without wasting 2 weeks of my life.

Definitely worth trying with NTFSDOS (the read-only driver is free).

Thanks for your info and perspective.

You are welcome.

Regards, Zvi

 

[Peder]

(e-mail address removed) (dwake) wrote in

My Windows 2000 pro installation has gone bad so I am booting from a
Win98 boot disk into dos. I can see my C drive, but not my other
rather large (100 gig) hard drive (E. I am thinking that my Win98
boot disk needs a device driver for my Ultra66 (Promise Tech)
controller?

I have downloaded the drivers for the Ultra66 from their website, but
can't figure out which win98 file to put on the floppy. Also, I
probably need to put a command in an autoexec.bat file or a config.sys
file?

If I can boot up into dos and see both drives, then I can copy the
contents of C: to E: with ease. Then I won't lose any of the data
when I do a clean reinstallation of windows 2000 professional.

Any ideas, anyone?

You could install a second copy of Win2k into another directory (like
Winnt2) on C:, then copy your data to E: and then nuke/rebuild C:. Just
don't format C: when it's offered.

 

[Peder]

Install another copy of Windows 2000 in a different directory, use that
to do your backup, then do your reinstallation.

Great minds think alike...

 

[chrisv]

Since you have Win 2000 then the large partition was probably formatted as NTFS.
C: must be FAT-32 (or plain FAT) if you can see it from a Win98 boot. Windows
98 can't access NTFS, only with a special driver, like NTFSPRO from
www.winternals.com, and it's very expensive.

Well, there's free stuff that's read-only...

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfswin98.shtml