FDISK & CMOS/BIOS setup

[TECHGUNS]

Hi graham_doh: Thanks for more info.

I think that Ive posted about this in the fourms somewhere.

Do ya know the manufacture of the hard drive.

I think yu going to have to reflash MBR with factory firmware to factory settings.
Dual boot MBR gets ****ed up and recovering MBR is hard. Single OS no problems.

Write zeros to the drive with the firmware after flashing MBR now it should let ya do what ya want.

Dont use the wrong firmare like Western Digital on Samsung.

Western Digital
http://support.wdc.com/

Maxtor
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...tware Downloads/ATA Hard Drives&downloadID=57

Yull have to Google for it if ya have another brand.

 

[graham_doh]

Re :
"I think yu going to have to reflash MBR with factory firmware to factory settings.
Dual boot MBR gets ****ed up and recovering MBR is hard. Single OS no problems."

I dont understand what a "re-flash MBR" is.

My hard drive is a 20GB Maxtor.

 

[TECHGUNS]

I think MBR is where the problem is.

Oh "MBR" master boot record/sector its small part of it on chip and most part of it is on the drive that kinda works like a bios for the hard drive kinda like the bios for the mother board but for the drive. I tells the drive where the patitions and OS are during boot. Some patition software will show it like Ranish patition manager ver240 but ya wont see it in fdisk. Ya might find it in DOS but I dont do it.

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/master_boot_record.htm

MBR hand shakes with bios on the mother during boot.

Reflash: using firmware to reset or burn a program in.

It gets messed confused up sometimes and ya have to reflash it. Firmware that ya can download from the manufacture can do this. It kinda like the bios on the mother board sometime ya have to reset it. That will erase MBR and make it like the way it was when new out of the box clean.

Writing zeros to the drive will erase everything on the disk, makes it raw, it take about a day to do it, use the factory firmware. fdisk dosent do that it just marks new patitions but the old patitions can be recovered.

What ya need is a raw drive, erase fat32, Linux, NTFS ect.

Writing zeros will make the disk "raw" just like a new drive out of the box clean.

 

[muckshifter]

I think MBR is where the problem is.

Oh "MBR" master boot record its a small memory chip that kinda works like a bios for the hard drive kinda like the bios for the mother board but for the drive. I tells the drive where the patitions and OS are during boot. Some patition software will show it like Ranish patition manager ver240 but ya wont see it in fdisk.

It gets messed confused up sometimes and ya have to reflash it. Firmware that ya can download from the manufacture can do this. It kinda like the bios on the mother board sometime ya have to reset it. That will erase MBR and make it like the way it was when new out of the box clean.

Writing zeros to the drive will erase everything on the disk, makes it raw, it take about a day to do it, use the factory firmware. fdisk dosent do that it just marks new patitions but the old patitions can be recovered.

Writing zeros will make the disk "raw" just like a new drive out of the box clean.

What a load of twaddle ... TG, you need do do some serious reading.

The MBR is NOT a small memory chip ... it is the first sector of the hard disk and is called the master boot record (or sometimes the partition table or master boot block). There is a small program at the beginning of this sector of the hard disk. The partition information, or partition table, is stored at the end of this sector. This program uses the partition information to determine which partition is bootable (usually the first primary DOS partition) and attempts to boot from it.

There is no Firmware ... typing FDISK /MBR is all that is required to reset it, and as a last resort.

STOP giving people the wrong information ... if you don't know, don't post.

 

[TECHGUNS]

OH.

Exuse my terms. I all does hand shakin through a control chip.

Their is firmware to reset MBR chech out MAX blast 4.

I think resetin MBR will do it.

Or he might beable to recover and go back to the original boot record.

 

[TECHGUNS]

I did go back and edit, my just brain is just wakin up.

Have to drink some more coffee.

 

[muckshifter]

TECHGUNS, Why does he need MaxBlast for a 20gig HD ??

A 20 GIG ... NOT 200

There is no "Firmware" for a 20 gig HD ...


Don't make me have to MOD your posts

 

[TECHGUNS]

Use the firmware for the hardrive brand cause if ya use the wrong firmware the memory flash chip wont have the correct firmware. Some drives dont have this chip like alot of Sygate.

Use Lifeguard tools on Western Digital, Maxblast on Maxtor.

There is a flash chip on most drives but not all since 2000, its for the handshake controller.

I think it does some MBR stuff but mostly it for the handshakin controller.

Oh I found an URL that has something about it.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage/177

Im a hardware guy not a software you know more about MBR than I do.

Ya can see MBR in DOS but ya wont see the firmware in the chip.

I know If ya use firmware to reset MBR on a LBA drive it also flashes firmware updates fixes into the chip it kinda like flashing mother bios. I not talkin cach memory this is the unknown flash ROM that everyone thinks Im crazy talkin about.

Thats why I like to use the firmware, and I havent ****ed up using, It works every time.

Oh Edit I found another URL about drive firmware.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/logicFirmware-c.html

 

[TECHGUNS]

Oh about 20gig.

All the firmware that I use auto detects the drive part numbers all the way down to 8.1gig and correctly updates firmware. partitions even smaller drives

I have firmware floppy MAX BLAST ver 1.0 I think its for a 8.1gig.

I keep ver 1.0 cause it has jumper setting data on it for real old drives.

 

[graham_doh]

Thankyou techguns and muckshifter. I now have a fully functioning hard disk with just windows on. I hope you enjoyed your exchanges with each otherand are still talking! Just to let you know the outcome of what worked and what didin't.

The CMOS/BIOS that couldn't be altered was rectified by moving the jumper on the mother board to reset it. Luckily I had a circuit diagram showing me where this was after Techguns told me to try this.

Techguns, MaxBlast4 was downloaded from the Maxtor website, but unfortunately it would not clear the MBR problem as it came up with the following pop-up box : "MaxBlast4 detects a non Windows boot sector on your primary boot disk. MaxBlast4 is not compatible with boot managers such as GoBack, System Commander 200, Partition Magic or LILO. Please refer to vendor of these products for disabling".
I did not think this was very helpful from the manufacturer of the hard disk. You'd have thought they would have known the following.

FDISK /MBR - Thanks Muckshifter. That's all it needed. I didn't need to reload Windows ME again after this command. I just removed the boot floppy and re-booted and Windows happily booted straight up without any mention or help from the Linux disk. I'm free from my dual boot system at last. I can now start rebuilding from a nice newly installed Windows. The first thing I've done is installed my internet software and ran all the Windows ME updates (after setting the system date and time by the way that caused me another few days of head scratching!!!).

It's a good job I'm off work with a broken arm or this would never have got done, so a final big thanks to the guy in the car who knocked me off my pushbike and almost killed me a month or so ago.

Happy Christmas to everyone who helps with these problems on sites like this and I hope you all have a fantastic New Year. I'm off to see if I can find another problem for you all to solve.

 

[muckshifter]

oh we talk ... we like the fight ... ;-)

Pleased you got it going ... old sckool new school what the heck, it works.

If any car ever knocked me off a pushbike, I'd be hitting 'em with me stick ... be well & have a good Xmas.