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SiNi*F8
03-01-2003, 11:59 AM
On my old test box, I had Linux (Mandrake ver 7 I think) dual booted with 98 on one hard drive, but before that, I had just Linux and then just Win 2000.

When I was at my friends place today, I was trying to remove Linux (the same version) and install Win 98 (which is what he wants on it) over the top of Linux. I managed to remove the Linux partitions (no thanks to fdisk) and then format the hdd to fat 32. The only problem after that was that I couldn't find the drive letter for his CD ROM drive to install 98! I went through the alphabet but still no letter. His BIOS is old, it's an AMIBIOS with mouse support (about 7 years I estimate, it's old enough not to be able to detect bigger HDD's like 20gig and so on).

Something else rather interesting, I formatted the partition with Linux Mandrake with fat 32 so I could get a drive letter for it, then formatted with format(.com?) from a Windows 95 boot disk. Once I restarted the PC, it came up with the Linux log in again&#33; <-- I think I have to congratulate Microsoft for yet another totally WONDERFUL piece of software, yeah right.

I know I&#39;ve done a fair bit of stuff with it that I shouldn&#39;t have, so the PC will probably be a little muddled, but that&#39;s all I had to play with. I&#39;m pretty sure that the only reason I could get my drive letter back for the CD ROM on my test box, was because 2000 is a boot cd.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to get the drive letter back without using a boot cd??

If this makes absolutely no sense to anyone, please tell me. When I read it it looks pretty confusing and I wrote it :| hehe.

Snee
12-03-2007, 12:43 AM
On my old test box, I had Linux (Mandrake ver 7 I think) dual booted with 98 on one hard drive, but before that, I had just Linux and then just Win 2000.

When I was at my friends place today, I was trying to remove Linux (the same version) and install Win 98 (which is what he wants on it) over the top of Linux. I managed to remove the Linux partitions (no thanks to fdisk) and then format the hdd to fat 32. The only problem after that was that I couldn't find the drive letter for his CD ROM drive to install 98! I went through the alphabet but still no letter. His BIOS is old, it's an AMIBIOS with mouse support (about 7 years I estimate, it's old enough not to be able to detect bigger HDD's like 20gig and so on).

Something else rather interesting, I formatted the partition with Linux Mandrake with fat 32 so I could get a drive letter for it, then formatted with format(.com?) from a Windows 95 boot disk. Once I restarted the PC, it came up with the Linux log in again! <-- I think I have to congratulate Microsoft for yet another totally WONDERFUL piece of software, yeah right.

I know I've done a fair bit of stuff with it that I shouldn't have, so the PC will probably be a little muddled, but that's all I had to play with. I'm pretty sure that the only reason I could get my drive letter back for the CD ROM on my test box, was because 2000 is a boot cd.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to get the drive letter back without using a boot cd??

If this makes absolutely no sense to anyone, please tell me. When I read it it looks pretty confusing and I wrote it :| hehe.
Right, sounds like a mess, all right. When you say linux-login, are you referring to lilo or grub, or are you saying there's a whole install left?

Normally when you remove all linux partitions, neither grub, nor lilo will turn up on bootup, even if they are still hiding in part in your mbr, although that ought to have been wiped with your c:-drive, or wherever you put it.

Win 98's bootloader may be a bit screwy, and thus somehow call up lilo/grub, though, never just dual-booted with that.

What you want to do, if possible, is to wipe every partition on the drive (that should be the easiest way possible to do it, assuming there's nothing you need to save), and you'll probably want to try doing it with something other than FDisk, if that didn't take out linux properly (in case you still have a whole linux-install left).

One thing you could do, is move the drive, temporarily, into another, more modern, machine and go at it with an XP installation disk. I haven't seen a linux partition yet that could hide from the xp-installer. Remove all partitions on the drive, but don' make new ones. Put it back, into the old one, then try setting up partitions again. Have a look here (http://bootdisk.com/), for updated bootdisks and whatnot.


As for the drive-letter missing, did you change owt in your bios, or physically remove the drive or something for a spell, or has your friend done something like that?

It could be a cable or jumper-mishap that means nothing detects the drive at all.

If there's been nothing done of that sort, could it be that you need to load up drivers for it from a separate floppy, before you can use it? I think that may have been needed on very old machines. I'm no expert though, been a long time since I mucked about with hardware that old.

lynx
12-03-2007, 12:29 PM
If you want to see CD drives from any DOS boot disk (which includes any WinXX boot disks) you MUST load the drivers.

A full win98 or winME install boot disk will include these drivers (and the necessary entries in config.sys and autoexec.bat) but a boot disk created using the format command will not include them.

You can download a preconfigured one here (http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/floppies.htm#boot_floppy), it should work with most cdrom drives.

Appzalien
12-03-2007, 04:09 PM
A couple of things to try if I remember correctly from my Win98 days. First get a good Win98 emergency floppy or startup disk. Format the drive in question using the unconditional switch which will format everything reguardless (format c: \u) or something to that effect. then start your install with the floppy which will load drivers for the rom drive. You might also consider trying a different rom drive if you still can't get a letter it may not be recognized by the bios.

Remember, the floppy setup creates a ram disk which uses the next available drive letter so if you have 1 hard drive (C) and one rom drive (D) then the ram drive will steal (D) and the rom drive will end up (E) during floppy setup.

If your floppy is bad or your rom drive is not recognized (jumper/ wrong position on Ide ribbon/ bad drive) you have to sort that out before you can install.