New Dell Dimensions 8300 Desktop Computer is a Pent.4 running XP Home Edition with lots of resources. My computer has two hard drives, and two optical drives which are connected to a motherboard. I have checked the connections to the Motherboard several times and they are correctly set.

Primary Master Hard Drive (80 GB) is now partitioned into XP and Win98SE. The partitions are hidden from each other and I can boot successfully between partitions using the Boot Magic Feature from Partition Magic 8.

Primary Slave Drive contains a 10 GB Hard Drive (almost full)with Win 98SE as the operating system. It contains very important information from my previous computer that I do not want to lose.

Immediately after we setup this new Dell Computer, we could only boot into the Master Hard Drive. It recognized that a 10 GB HD with Windows 98SE was in the slave bay, and through MY COMPUTER we could access some data from it but we could never boot into it.

Master drive had the letter C:
Slave containing Windows 98SE drive was D:
The DVD was E: CD was:F

The problem started when we used Partition Magic to try to make the slave drive (which had originally been recognized as D also bootable. But that never worked out.

Partition Magic 8 now says it is there, but cannot access it because it it has an unknown file system.
Master Hard Drive now does not even see it anymore.

It doesn't seem to have a Drive Letter assigned any more.

DVD has now become D: and CD has now become E:

I found the following information in Computer Management under Disk Management:
Disk 0 Basic 74.50GB C:59.81 GB NTFS Healthy (System)
WIN98 14.65 GB FAT32 Healthy (Unknown Partition)
[The above are the two partitions on the 80GB hard drive which are hidden from each other but are both bootable.]

Disk 1 Basic 9.53GB 9.53GB (Unknown Partition)
[This is the Slave Drive- the problematic one]

Question:
How can we get Partition Magic to know that this second (Slave) hard drive contains a FAT 32 filing system so it can access it to make it bootable.
Or how can we even get Windows XP to recognize it again so that we can at least see it in My Computer like we could originally?

I don't know where else to look for it or how to make any changes to System Folders.
I realize that this is a complicated situation, and I could not find any link that specifically addressed a solution. I hope someone can point the way to make it usable again.

Thanks for spending time reading this.
PLP

The problem started when we used Partition Magic to try to make the slave drive (which had originally been recognized as D also bootable. But that never worked out.

You dont specify what you asked PM to do to the slave to achieve this - but somehow or other it sounds like either the slave's boot record(s) or more likely just the slave's partition tables have been corrupted; and possibly corrupted by having the fifth byte of the relevant partition table (which sets the partition type) set incorrectly or just hidden. Some HEX values for this byte are:-

-------------visible---hidden
fat16----------06--------16--
fat32----------0b--------1b--
extended-------05--------15--
fat16lba-------0e--------1e--
fat32lba-------0c--------1c--
extended lba---0f--------1f--

The offsets for this byte in the four partitions tables are (01c2, 01d2, 01e2 and 01f2) if you want to edit them directly using such as TinyHexer.

Partition Magic 8 now says it is there, but cannot access it because it it has an unknown file system.

In what way can it not access it? If PM can see it in its display then RClick on the Slave's Win98 partition and from the Advanced sub-menu choose to make the partition active if you can or to unhide it if it is hidden. Then enter the bios setup and change the bootable drive from hdd0 to hdd1. If you bios doesn't allow this you would need to reverse the drives and their jumpering (or just install the current slave as master) and see if you can boot to it OK. It will only be capable of booting if it is visible and contains an active (and thereby bootable) partition. The action of making a partiton active will normally render it visible and hide other primary partitions on that drive.

Before getting into recovery software or how to edit your slave's mbr you could also try using PM or DI (or another imaging program) to just copy the partition to a new partition (or some unallocated space) on your master drive. The partition itself is probably just fine - its just the markers to it that are wrong; by copying it in this fashion the correct markers should be setup in the new location.

I would also configure boot magic to stop functioning (in other words remove its drive overlay from the master's mbr) for the time being as long as you didn't install Windows98 on the master drive while the WindowsXP partition was visible.

As a general note: it is quite easy to use WinXP's boot.ini file to boot different installations of Win2K/XP on different partitions and different drives - but it is never "easy" to organise a boot menu to boot Win9X/ME FROM DIFFERENT DRIVES. The only simple way to do this is by changing the boot order in the BIOS setup as already indicated.

On another general note: Win98 will assign drive letters quite differently from WinXP - this is a commonly confusing area and is further obfuscated if WinXP is on NTFS, which Win98's MyComputer will not "see" even though programs like PM will be able to see it from within Win98.

Post back with any additional queries.

Hello Again, Please don't interpret my delay in answering as not being grateful for your quick response. I actually did write to you the day I saw it to tell you that I needed time to look into all your suggestions, but for some reason I don't see that post of mine attached to this thread. I don't know where it got posted.

I have tried all of your suggestions but none of them changed anything.

Just to repeat, the slave drive was taken out from our first computer with all its data accessible and in tact. There are no partitions in it. It came preinstalled by Dell on the first computer and we just added data and programs until it was almost full. Then when we got the new computer with XP in the Master Drive, we installed this Win98SE in the slave bay. All the settings are correct.

The only part of your message that I don't know how to use is where you said:

"......it sounds like either the slave's boot record(s) or more likely just the slave's partition tables have been corrupted; and possibly corrupted by having the fifth byte of the relevant partition table (which sets the partition type) set incorrectly or just hidden. Some HEX values for this byte are:-............."

I just don't know where to look for these hex values or how to change them. It seems like this might be the solution.

I have very little technical knowledge, and even less technical aptitude without some detailed direction.

That is the reason I used Partition Magic to try to make the slave drive bootable. But it seems like I didn't do that too well.

The only other thing I have done in Partition Magic since starting this thread was to go back and "unhide" the slave drive. It then changed the drive letters.

The slave disk which had no drive letter before, now has the letter G: But when I right click on it to explore or whatever, the message is always the same "This file system is not supported.

In the Disk Management window I see the following information about it:
Disk 1 Basic 9153 MB G: 9.53 GB Healthy
when I clicked on Properties File System Tab it says: RAW
None of the other options produce any information. So its now having a Drive letter doesn't change anything.

Again, thanks for helping.

Could you go to the PM folder and open partin.exe (or from the Start Menus look under PM Tools for the shortcut PartitionInfo). Click on the save button and having saved the text file either post its content or upload the file here or just email it to me. If its over 20KB zip it up first to upload it.

Still not clear exactly what you did when you attempted to make the already bootable slave drive "bootable".

Since you have a dual boot master drive, please be aware that the Drive Letter assignments will not always be identical from Win98 and from WinXP. It may be confusing though its not of any special relevance here - other than the slave now has a Drive Letter (having now been unhidden).

The "Raw" partition could be due to the partition having been "deleted" (actually only the partition table itself will have been affected) or of an otherwise corrupt or inaccessible partition boot sector. In the meantime you could try GetDataBack for FAT (http://www.runtime.org/); the demo version will show you what is recoverable but is tedious if there are many files to recover since they have to be done one at a time.

When you open PartIn (which is a read only application) select the drive from the drop down list then highlight the partition and then hit the Boot Button if you want to read the value for the media descriptor.

If the data on the slave is very important then do try and make a copy of the partition or the drive using a program such as DriveImage before writing anything to the drive. You can also select the partition in step 2 of GetDataBack and from the tools menu create an image file. This is a literal byte-by-byte copy of the partition and can be used instead of the actual partition for recovery, restoration and experimentation.

Since the drive is physically intact and the file system has not been accessed I would be quietly confident that you should get back all your data - eventually.

Thanks for the encouragement at the end of your message. I found the information in Partition Info that you were asking about and will be sending it directly to your email. The subject is: "plp partition information."

In addition to sending you only the information about Windows98SE installed as G: in the slave drive, I am sending just a bit more of the text files than you asked for.

I thought there might be some use in comparing G: in the slave drive with the data about Windows 98SE as a hidden partition in Drive 1.

There are differences in the numbers, but I don't know if that is of any significance.

You were asking:.........
"Still not clear exactly what you did when you attempted to make the already bootable slave drive "bootable".

As far as I knew, the slave drive was not bootable. When we purchased this new computer, Dell Tech Support agreed to help me uninstall the 10GB HD from our old Dell computer and install it in the slave bay on the new computer. When I asked about making it bootable, they said that Dell does not support dual booting on their computers. Their tech support staff is not trained to do this and are even forbidden to help users with this. But at that time, I could see my old hard drive in the slave bay listed as D: and I was able to access the files in it.

But since I wanted to make it bootable, I decided to use Partition Magic. Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly what I did. Since it was the first time I used it I just followed the sequences and accepted the default options. I remember changing between hidden and unhidden, but I don't know what else I did to make the file system "unknown".

Thanks again.

There are a couple of related things of immediate note relating to the format of the bad partition. The PartIn Boot Record for drive G: (Drive: 2, Starting sector: 63, Type: FAT) is a PQ PartIn display for a FAT16 partition in that it has 21 and not the 28 entries which a FAT32 partition should display. There is some confirmation of this at entry no. 20 (File System Type) as FAT16. This latter is just a display for us humans to read and could, if one wanted, be edited/modified; it isnt used as such by windows.

The point is that a functional 10gig partition cannot be FAT16 (the absolute maximum using a 64k cluster size is 4gig) and it must have originally been FAT32 since Win98 was installed on it. Presumably the partition type is incorrect in that hdd's partition table. You could examine this by using ptedit.exe (from the PM folder - it doensnt normally have a shortcut pointing to it). Select Drive2 at the top and then read the type value for the only entry that should have any values in it and post it back here (along with the other values for that record if you like). You could use the same program to edit this value to 0C (that's a zero followed by a C) which would be the correct value for a FAT32 partition. Maybe leave that till later on - it all depends how critical it is to get your data back - since such an edit is a critical manouvre.

However, since the boot sectors for FAT16 and FAT32 are different PartIn cannot hope to display the correct values if the type id is wrong in the first place.

Of perhaps greater concern is the FATs themselves because if these are wrong or newly formatted it will make total recovery less likely. One would need to examine them with a hex editor to be sure. The trial version of WinHex (http://www.winhex.com/) would probably be the easiest for this purpose. Tiny Hexer (http://www.mirkes.de/) is a smaller download and could also be used but is not so easy to "navigate" with.

Just about everything else, including the drive geometry, looks compatible and OK.

Only you know the value of your data. The safest approach, IMO, is to use GetDataBack. Make an image in step 2 and then see what is directly recoverable by re-scanning and using that image file. Once your critical data is safe we can experiment to your heart's content - even if for just educational purposes. An alternative approach would be to make an image of the partition using PQ's Drive Image and then restore that image to wherever you like but specifying it to be a FAT32 partition and to not use its original type; no guarantees that it would work but it is another safe approach.

Just so all peeps can have a sense of this:-

Disk Geometry Information for Disk 2: 1244 Cylinders, 255 Heads, 63 Sectors/Track
System PartSect # Boot BCyl Head Sect FS ECyl Head Sect StartSect NumSects
0 0 80 0 1 1 06 1023 254 63 63 19,984,797
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 0 80 0 1 1 06 1243 254 63 63 19984797

Partition Information for Disk 2: 9,758.2 Megabytes
Volume PartType Status Size MB PartSect # StartSect TotalSects
G: FAT16B Pri,Boot 9,758.2 0 0 63 19,984,797

Boot Record for drive G: (Drive: 2, Starting sector: 63, Type: FAT)
1. Jump: EB 58 90
2. OEM Name: MSWIN4.1
3. Bytes per Sector: 512
4. Sectors per Cluster: 16
5. Reserved Sectors: 32
6. Number of FAT's: 2
7. Root Dir Entries: 0
8. Total Sectors: 0 (0x0)
9. Media Descriptor: 0xF8
10. Sectors per FAT: 0
11. Sectors per Track: 63 (0x3F)
12. Number of Heads: 255 (0xFF)
13. Hidden Sectors: 63 (0x3F)
14. Big Total Sectors: 19984797 (0x130F19D)
15. Drive ID: 0x81
16. Dirty Flag: 0x00
17. Extended boot Sig: 0x29
18. Serial Number: 0x308E8241
19. Volume Name:
20. File System Type: FAT16
21. Boot Signature: 0xAA55

PS
The bold 06 in "0 0 80 0 1 1 06 1023 254 63 63 19,984,797" is the mbr's partition sector byte that designates FAT16.

Hello, I am taking your advice and using the cautious approach and doing one step at a time. You asked for the information in Ptedit.exe. I couldn't copy it so I have typed below the chart for Drive 2.

I have looked at the two links to the hex editors, but at first reading they do not seem too easy for me to understand. I am assuming that GetDataBack is not freeware like Tiny Hex. My data is very important to me, but my funds are limited and that is why I do appreciate so much that you have taken me this far in trying to resolve the problem. Thank you again.
P.S. I just went back to see a preview of this reply and the table I typed is all out of syn from the way it looks on this page. I hope it is not too confusing.
__________________________________________________ _______________


Drive 2 (9758MB) 1244 cyl, 255 heads, 63 sectors per track
__________________________________________________ _____________________

Starting Ending Sectors
Type Boot Cyl Head Sector Cyl Head Sector Before Sectors
1 06 80 0 1 1 1023 254 63 63 19984797


2 The lower three lines all have zeros in them

3

4

Well that confirms that there is just one 10gig partition referenced on the disk; it is an active (bootable) and visible partition BUT is incorrectly marked as FAT16.

Either you do now have a newly formatted FAT16 partition with an incorrect size or you have a FAT32 partition with incorrect FAT16 references. The only way to be sure would be to look at the FATs themselves and WinHex would be the easiest app to use to do this.

Post back how you would like to proceed. Also, do you have a lot of files that you wish to recover?

Once you have made a copy or image of this partition I would be happy for you to change the type from 06 to 0C using PartEdit.exe and then to run PartIn.exe again.

Just to show you what I mean. If you get WinHex and then from the StartCenter (from the Tools menu if it doesnt automatically display) select Open Disk | select Logical Drives | select the relevant partition.

Then from the Access Button (top - rightish) select FAT 1.

Each row has 16x8=128 bits so a FAT 32 table will have just 4 records per row and a FAT 16 one will have 8 records per row; the first few values will have a few FF and similar values - but it should be clear enough if you scoll on down. What you don't want to see after the first couple of bytes is a whole load of zeros and nothing else, which would indicate a newly formatted partition.

The upper record in the attached file is FAT16 and the lower one is FAT32. I think it is clear enough.

Thanks for the explanation. I appreciate your leading me by the hand in wading through this unfamiliar territory. It will take me a while to make an image with GetDataBack and then try to understand what I see in WinHex.

You suggested:
"An alternative approach would be to make an image of the partition using PQ's Drive Image and then restore that image to wherever you like but specifying it to be a FAT32 partition and to not use its original type; no guarantees that it would work but it is another safe approach."

I am a little skeptical about whether I will be able to make a disk image of the slave drive with Getdataback because: A while back when I was still attempting to solve the problem on my own, I used PQ's Drive Image intending to restore it on the Win98SE partition in Drive C:
I got through all of the steps and the result came up: "Check Failed". I didn't see any place to specify that it was to be a Fat32 partition and not its original type "FAT". Do you know if GetDataBack will offer that option? I will keep on trying. It may take me a while to get through it all. Thanks.

The image file created by GDB is a LITERAL copy of a whole partition. If you open such a file with a hex editor it would be identical (bit by bit) with the partition from which it was made. The image file created by DI is not literally identical but can be "redrawn" when DI is used to restore it. Under its options dialog (after choosing the image file and the place to restore it to) there is a check box to enable resizing to fit the whole unallocated area. I have always assumed that if one started out with, say a small FAT16 partition, that if it was resized greater than a size compatible with FAT16 that it would redraw the structures appropriately; perhaps this isn't the case. There is also no way of knowing how it would react to corrupted partition information.

GDB is recovery software, and although it can create an image, it is not imaging software as such. It can use such images in place of the originals so that writing to the file doesn't make recovery any more complicated. For example GDB has no direct way of restoring such a "partition file". One would need to do this manually with a hex editor and edit the partition table in the mbr (or within an extended partition for logical partitions) appropriately. Drive Image would correct the partition table and correct other things such as cluster size, if that was necessary, as part of its own restoration process. It can also use considerable compression so that its images are much smaller than the original. High compression just makes creation and restoration of the files take longer. Both GDB and DI can create compressed images but you need their software to use and "see" them.

GDB scans for files and file-segments including deleted file data and attempts to turn them individually back into files. It's greatest problem is with fragmented files in the absence of a FAT since although the file size would be known from the file's attributes there would be no references in the FAT to any fragments following the first fragment. An often forgotten reason for regular defragmentation is how it can help recovery following deletion of files. The file's own file record include the file's attributes, its size and starting cluster - so if a file is contiguous it's data can easily be found intact on the drive as long as it hasn't been overwritten. The only change made by a file deletion is one byte in the file's file record, so recovery programs can easily detect this and then effectively "visualise" the file.

I hope I am not trying your patience by these naive questions which I ask in order to understand what I will be doing after I download these programs.

Now that you have presented the various options, I would still feel more confident about doing it if you would suggest the exact order you think I should follow once I have GDB and WinHex. I will do what you think is best. The only thing I have to contribute to the discussion, is that, if possible, I would like to recover the data, if it is still there.

I realize that my inexperience imposes limitations on any method you suggest, but I would still like to try under your guidance, if you are still willing to share your knowledge with me.

Thanks again.

I hope I am not trying your patience by these naive questions which I ask in order to understand what I will be doing after I download these programs.

Paul is doing a good job helping you, so I'll let him handle the tech end of it, but I thought I'd drop a line in about that comment. He's dealing with utilities I'm not familiar with anyway.

We usually have the opinion here that the only stupid question is the one you never ask. We also realize that many of our visitors don't know much about computers, and quite often need things explained in simple layman's terms that any idiot can follow. That's not to imply that we deal with idiots, or consider them so, just the way we have to look at it, since the people who come here with questions do so because they don't know what to do. If we answer them the way we would answer each other, they would leave more confused than they got here...if we minded explaining things we wouldn't be here.

So don't be too concerned about having a lot of questions, it's fairly common, and we don't mind answering them, since you probably wouldn't be here if you knew all this stuff already. All we ask is that you try to follow the information given, and if links are posted with information you need to know, read them.

Also, in your case you have been quite appreciative of Paul's efforts, I'd be willing to bet he doesn't mind explaining things in more detail at all.

I absolutely echo all that Paleo Pete states. One never knows how "technical" one should be and any feedback in the form of ANY relevant questions is welcome.

re WinHex.
If you can follow the earlier instructions and then get to FAT 1, the first File Allocation Table. (The second table FAT 2 should be identical and is a backup in case a bad sector develops in FAT 1).

There are three main columns. The offset is the position in whatever is being examined; in this case it is a whole partition (or logical drive). There are 16 values (from 0 to F in hexadecimal) in each row of the central column; each pair of digits represents one byte. The column on the right is just a text interpretation of the bytes in the same row and doesn't concern us with the FATs.

Each FAT32 record is 4 bytes long represented by 4 pairs of digits; each FAT16 one is 2 bytes long or 2 pairs. Leaving aside the values on the very first row but at some point thereafter there will be a sequence with either alternate bytes being 00 or every fourth record having three pairs of 00. That's the information I would like and which will tell me whether this is a FAT16 or a FAT32 record. Just post back the sixteen pairs in the very first row (which is atypical) as well as say the third or fourth row. If a hard drive partition has been accidentally formatted the first two records would be F8 FF FF 0F FF FF FF FF (FAT32) or F8 FF FF FF (FAT 16) and thereafter everything in the FATs would be 00 values.

re GTB.
Open it.
For Step 1 select check all values and then click next.
On the Step 2 page select/highlight the first partition on the second hard drive (HD 129 in decimal or HD 81 in hex is the second HDD). Both should be approx 10,000 MB since there is only one partition on your 10gig Slave Drive. Then go to the Tools menu and select Image File. Uncheck "Allow Multiple Files" unless you intend to save the result to CDs. Give the image a name of your choice and save it to your good drive. It will take a while for this to complete.

Close GDB and then reopen it.
For Step 1 choose Images and then click next.
For Step 2 highlight the Image you have just made under Images. If it doesnt appear there automatically then click the Image Icon and browse to and open your saved file. Click next.
For Step 3 choose "Search Entire Drive" and leave whatever default is shown as file type. You may need to come back here and specify FAT16 or FAT32 or excessive search later - but for now use the default shown. Click next.
For Step 4, if more than one file system is found just choose the first one with a green button beside it. You can always try any other ones later. The number of systems found is a function of how the drive has been used in the past and not of the actual current file system per se. Click next.
For Step 5, explore the directory tree displayed for your files. Items in red are system files (I think) and previously deleted files will have a line through them. Having found the files you can RClick on them to choose what to do. With the trial version you can only choose to open them in another application and then save them individually from that application. With the paid version you can copy and paste them (in batches or by whole folders if necessary).

Neither of these apps will write to your disk if used in this fashion and from the default settings used when the apps are installed - so all of the above should be completely safe.

Post back any questions. The useful exercise in all of this for me is to try and write in an understandable way; this helps my own learning processes. Only feedback lets one know how to improve in this regard.

I got this far with WinHex but I am not sure that what I am reporting is what you asked for. I have several conficting things to report. The only vaguely positive thing I noticed was in the right hand column among all the gibberish I culd definitely recognize snippets of files and folders and all sorts of familiar names part of emails I had written.

What I am posting below are selected rows taken from vaious sectors as I scrolled thru the whole record that WinHex brought up. I am doing this because the first four rows that you asked about didn't seem to have anything in them like what you were saying was characteristic of either Fat 16 or Fat 32.
33 C0 8E D0 BC 00 7C FB 50 07 50 1F FC BE 1B 7C
BF 1B 06 50 57 B9 E5 01 F3 A4 CB BE BE 07 B1 04
38 2C 7C 09 75 15 83 C610 E2 F5 CD 18 8B 14 8B
EE 83 C6 10 49 7416 38 2C 74 F6 BE 10 07 4E AC
3C 00 74 FA BB O7 00 B 0E CD 10 EB F2 89 46 25
96 8A46 04 B4 06 3C 0E 74 11 B4 0B 3C 0C 74 05
3A C4 75 2B 40 C6 46 25 06 75 24 BB AA 55 50 B4 SECTOR 1 OF
19999728


BD F7 00 00 BE F7 00 00 BF F7 00 00 C0 F7 00 00
C1 F7 00 00 C2 F7 00 00 C3 F7 00 00 C4 F7 00 00
C5 F7 00 00 C6 F7 00 00 C7 F7 00 00 C8 F7 00 00 SECTOR 591 OF 591 0F 9999728


AD 01 01 00 AE 01 01 00 AF 01 01 00 B0 01 01 00
B1 01 01 00 B6 01 01 00 B7 01 01 00 B8 01 01 00
B5 01 01 00 B6 01 01 00 B7 01 01 00 B8 01 01 00 SECTOR611 19999728



53 00 B0 13 00 00 40 0B 00 00 38 04 00 00 D0 02
00 00 B0 13 00 00 40 0B 00 00 02 00 05 00 01 00
00 00 17 00 EC 03 53 00 00 00 1F 00 53 00 D8 09 SECTOR 287473 OF 19999728



00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 00 00 01 00 39 53 00 00 00
35 31 33 33 39 7D 01 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 00 00
64 33 32 01 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 00 00 26 00 7B SECTOR 2154514 of 19999728

2154514

I am sorry this table is so badly arranged. It looked right when I copied it from where I had noted it down while winhex was open, but when I pasted it into this message, it doesn't look the same as what I copied.

The hex is quite readable but I think you have opened the physical disk rather than the logical drive (the partition), since the first snippet you have posted looks like the beginning of the mbr (master boot record).

When you click on the Access button, if there is a list of partitions (or just one partition in your case) then open it as a new window. Alternatively select the correct logical drive and not a physical drive from the Start Center. Only when you have opened a partition will you be able to jump directly to the first sector of FAT 1 (the main File Allocation Table) when clicking on the Access button.

No need to copy stuff manually. Highlight an area that you want to copy and then go to Edit | Copy Block and choose "Editor Display" you can then paste into notepad. Things will display a little oddly on the forums here because every bit of "white space" in a paragraph is reduced to a single space. An alternative is to just upload the whole txt file.

The fact that you can read snippets of files is both good and to be expected - only writing new stuff to the drive would overwrite the actual data itslef. What gets lost or jumbled are the pointers to the data - and the pointers to the pointers to the data!

One minor point when using WinHex is to maximise the internal window and then you will display one whole sector at a time. This is just a little less confusing I think.

I would be pretty sure that your snippets of sectors 591 and 611 are both from a FAT32 table though it would be nice to see the very first values. The reason is that, for example, the sequence BD F7 00 00 BE F7 00 00 BF F7 00 00 C0 F7 00 00 from sector 591 translates to a sequence of four 32-bit binary numbers which in turn translate to the normal decimal values of 63421, 63422, 63423, 63424. This would be part of a typical FAT chain representing contiguous clusters of one specific file. If this was a FAT16 record it would be a meaningless FAT sequence with alternate values referencing cluster 0 (which doesnt even exist).

I'm very tempted to suggest using ptedit to change the type of partition from FAT16 to FAT32 and see what results. If you have made a copy or image of the partition then I would say go ahead and try this.

I am afraid that I have struck out on all the options you suggested.

The same things happened today as yesterday.
Both days when I tried to open the logical drive from the Start Center, it gave me an error message saying that an error (#10) occurred while trying to access logical Partition 1 on Drive G: It suggested that I try opening the physical drive instead.... I did that yesterday and that is when I sent you the information yesterday.

Today, was no different. When I clicked on the Access button and chose Physical Partition 1 (9.5 GB Fat 32) the error message (#11)read "error occurred while allocating 1.3 GB"

There were other choices in the drop down menu i.e partition table, partition table template, Boot sector, Boot sector template, etc.
I also came across other options FAT1, FAT2..... But no matter what I chose, the same error#11 came up. "error occured while allocating 1.3 GB".

As far as your other thought about using ptedit to change the type of partition from FAT16 to FAT32. That was one of the things that I already tried to do when I first learned about ptedit. I guess it was fool hardy, because at that time I hadn't yet made a disk image, but none of the options under Convert Partition were available so nothing came of that. PM has not been able to do anything with G: except say it is there and its size.

I folowed your directions for making a disk image with GDB, but haven't done anything with it yet. Please let me know where it will fit into the sequence.

I have made a note of the helpful methods you suggested about how to copy without doing it manually as I was doing.

I hope we haven't run into a dead end.

Originally posted by Paleo Pete


Paul is doing a good job helping you, so I'll let him handle the tech end of it, but I thought I'd drop a line in about that comment. He's dealing with utilities I'm not familiar with anyway.

We usually have the opinion here that the only stupid question is the one you never ask. We also realize that many of our visitors don't know much about computers, and quite often need things explained in simple layman's terms that any idiot can follow. That's not to imply that we deal with idiots, or consider them so, just the way we have to look at it, since the people who come here with questions do so because they don't know what to do. If we answer them the way we would answer each other, they would leave more confused than they got here...if we minded explaining things we wouldn't be here.

So don't be too concerned about having a lot of questions, it's fairly common, and we don't mind answering them, since you probably wouldn't be here if you knew all this stuff already. All we ask is that you try to follow the information given, and if links are posted with information you need to know, read them.

Also, in your case you have been quite appreciative of Paul's efforts, I'd be willing to bet he doesn't mind explaining things in more detail at all.

"We usually have the opinion here that the only stupid question is the one you never ask..... So don't be too concerned about having a lot of questions, it's fairly common, and we don't mind answering them, since you probably wouldn't be here if you knew all this stuff already."


Oh Supreme Exalted Grand Master Geek Moderator, Paleo Pete!

Your reply was most reassuring. I feel very privileged to be at the receiving end of such expert and freely given advice as is offered in this forum. I consider myself very lucky that Paul decided to take up the challenge. Paul has modestly implied that there may be some reciprocal gain for him, in that he improves his writing skills by breaking down his answers into such simple terms.

The reason that this reply to your post is coming several days after you wrote it, is that I could not find a reply button at the end of your post. So I guess I even need advice in navigating this forum.

After reading your post all I could see below it was the newest post that Paul had written. There was a reply button at the bottom of his post and that is where I was able to answer him. The round about way I finally found a blank to send to you, was by looking at threads that you had contributed to and found the one where you had written to me.
Anyhow better late than never. Thanks plp

Either the conflict between the partition being reported as FAT16, when it is in fact a FAT32 partition, is throwing the other applications out or there is some other corruption of the partition boot sector.

It's worth trying to use PartEdit to identify the drive as FAT32 even though you have already played with using it. Open PartEdit | Select the second drive | Put the cursor in the relevant partition | Hit the Set Type Button and choose 0B for FAT32. 0B should show up in Red. Hit OK and then hit Save Changes.

Next open PartInfo | Select the correct drive and partition | Preview and see if the record has changed to one with 28 numbered entries instead of one with 21 entries the last time. If so please post back the results.

You can repeat the same as above but having chosen 0C for the FAT32X format.

PartInfo deciphers all the hex information in the partition boot sector so another way of examining it would be to use WinHex. Navigate to sector 63 on the physical drive (the last two bytes of this sector should be the "magic number" given by 55 AA) and help to identify that this is a boot sector.

It should look very similar to the following which is the partition boot sector from a Win98 FAT32 partition of identical size to your own partition.

000007E00 EB 58 90 4D 53 57 49 4E 34 2E 31 00 02 10 24 00
000007E10 02 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 3F 00 00 00
000007E20 9D F1 30 01 16 26 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00
000007E30 01 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
000007E40 80 00 29 FD D4 C9 40 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20
000007E50 20 20 46 41 54 33 32 20 20 20 FA 33 C9 8E D1 BC
000007E60 F8 7B 8E C1 BD 78 00 C5 76 00 1E 56 16 55 BF 22
000007E70 05 89 7E 00 89 4E 02 B1 0B FC F3 A4 8E D9 BD 00
000007E80 7C C6 45 FE 0F 8B 46 18 88 45 F9 38 4E 40 7D 25
000007E90 8B C1 99 BB 00 07 E8 97 00 72 1A 83 EB 3A 66 A1
000007EA0 1C 7C 66 3B 07 8A 57 FC 75 06 80 CA 02 88 56 02
000007EB0 80 C3 10 73 ED BF 02 00 83 7E 16 00 75 45 8B 46
000007EC0 1C 8B 56 1E B9 03 00 49 40 75 01 42 BB 00 7E E8
000007ED0 5F 00 73 26 B0 F8 4F 74 1D 8B 46 32 33 D2 B9 03
000007EE0 00 3B C8 77 1E 8B 76 0E 3B CE 73 17 2B F1 03 46
000007EF0 1C 13 56 1E EB D1 73 0B EB 27 83 7E 2A 00 77 03
000007F00 E9 FD 02 BE 7E 7D AC 98 03 F0 AC 84 C0 74 17 3C
000007F10 FF 74 09 B4 0E BB 07 00 CD 10 EB EE BE 81 7D EB
000007F20 E5 BE 7F 7D EB E0 98 CD 16 5E 1F 66 8F 04 CD 19
000007F30 41 56 66 6A 00 52 50 06 53 6A 01 6A 10 8B F4 60
000007F40 80 7E 02 0E 75 04 B4 42 EB 1D 91 92 33 D2 F7 76
000007F50 18 91 F7 76 18 42 87 CA F7 76 1A 8A F2 8A E8 C0
000007F60 CC 02 0A CC B8 01 02 8A 56 40 CD 13 61 8D 64 10
000007F70 5E 72 0A 40 75 01 42 03 5E 0B 49 75 B4 C3 03 18
000007F80 01 27 0D 0A 49 6E 76 61 6C 69 64 20 73 79 73 74
000007F90 65 6D 20 64 69 73 6B FF 0D 0A 44 69 73 6B 20 49
000007FA0 2F 4F 20 65 72 72 6F 72 FF 0D 0A 52 65 70 6C 61
000007FB0 63 65 20 74 68 65 20 64 69 73 6B 2C 20 61 6E 64
000007FC0 20 74 68 65 6E 20 70 72 65 73 73 20 61 6E 79 20
000007FD0 6B 65 79 0D 0A 00 00 00 49 4F 20 20 20 20 20 20
000007FE0 53 59 53 4D 53 44 4F 53 20 20 20 53 59 53 7E 01
000007FF0 00 57 49 4E 42 4F 4F 54 20 53 59 53 00 00 55 AA

FYI - The main navigation values using LBA are in color.

blue = (0x24)=36 reserved sectors for the boot sector. The PBS (partition boot sector) is the first of these and FAT1 starts immediately after this block. In this instance since the PBS is at sector 63 (which is the 64th sector on the drive since sector 0 is the first sector) FAT1 will start at sector 99

orange = (0x3F)=63 hidden sectors (the number of sectors on the disk before the start of the partition)

red = (0x0130F19D)=19984797 total sectors in the partition

limegreen = (0x2616)=9750 sectors per FAT; thus the root directory will start at sector 99 + 9750 + 9750 = 19599 of the hard drive or sector 19599 - 63 = 19536 of the partition itself.

If editing the partition table using ptedit doesnt help then there are, I think, only three real options and noting that the data structures of your partition are almost certainly intact.

a) create an identical new empty FAT32 partition somewhere and then copy all the data from this troublesome partition into it.

b) copy the hex outlined above into your current partition boot sector.

c) use recovery software.

Paul, I got the result you were expecting for G when I used PtEdit to convert it to OB for Fat32. It now has 28 entries instead of the 21 it had last time. Then you wrote:

"You can repeat the same as above but having chosen 0C for the FAT32X format."

I have not yet repeated and chosen OC for Fat32X because I am not sure if you suggested this is an optional choice (if OB for FAT32 hadn't worked) or if it is an addition which is necessary after having first chosen OB for Fat 32 and successfully converted it to Fat 32.

So before choosing OC for FAT32X in PtEdit, I am first going to check in WinHex to see if my numbers match the ones you set out.

In Wix you said:
"last two bytes of this sector should be the "magic number" given by 55 AA) and help to identify that this is a boot sector"

HURRAH, these are the last two bytes on my disk as well.
************************************************** *********

But perhaps I rejoiced too soon. Most of the rows on my table in Sector 63 matched exactly what you said they should be. But a few of the numbers in the first few rows in Sector 63 which you highlighted in colors were not the same in mine as yours.

After coming to the end of the sector and seeing the "magic numbers", I was encouraged so I came back to the forum to report what I had seen. Then I went back to my WinHex table to make a note of the difference between your colored numbers and the numbers I had.

But for some reason I could not locate the same spot where I had been comparing our numbers the first time.

The original time I checked, the numbers in my offset column were exactly like yours. From there I just followed along the columns.
000007E00
000007E10
000007E20 and so on down until the end of the sector.

But when I went back I got entirely different numbers in the offset column, even though I navigated to Sector 63 again.
I must have somehow unwittingly messed things up in navigating to sector 63. To navigate, I chose Position and under Physical, I chose Sector 63. The other values that were already filled in were
Cylinder/Track/0 Head/Side/1 Sector 63 (which I had entered).
While still in Position, I thought that if I selected Offset I could enter the same numbers that matched yours, but when I typed in
000007E00 the message came up that E was an invalid character.
[I don't think you could have imagined the messes that an inexperienced person can get into]!

In any case, these are the few of the numbers in mine that did not match your colored numbers. In the blue numbers you have 24 and I have 20. The yellow numbers 3F 00 00 00 - I have the same.
The red numbers are the same but your green numbers are 16 26 and I have 81 00.
Most of the other rows in which you have not highlighted any colors, the numbers are exactly the same. But in your row which begins with 7E30 the numbers are all different than mine in that row.

I can't be more specific now because I can't get back to the place I got to when I first started. Can you give me some directions to get back there. It just opened there the first time so I just took it for granted. Again, thanks for not giving up on me.

This is the Boot Record from PtEdit:
=========================
Boot Record for drive G: (Drive: 2, Starting sector: 63, Type: FAT32)
================================================== ================================================== =======
1. Jump: EB 58 90
2. OEM Name: MSWIN4.1
3. Bytes per Sector: 512
4. Sectors per Cluster: 16
5. Reserved Sectors: 32
6. Number of FAT's: 2
7. Reserved: 0x0000
8. Reserved: 0x0000
9. Media Descriptor: 0xF8
10. Sectors per FAT: 0
11. Sectors per Track: 63 (0x3F)
12. Number of Heads: 255 (0xFF)
13. Hidden Sectors: 63 (0x3F)
14. Big Total Sectors: 19984797 (0x130F19D)
15. Big Sectors per FAT: 1093206145
16. Extended Flags: 0x8E82
17. FS Version: 8240
18. First Cluster of Root: 538976288 (0x20202020)
19. FS Info Sector: 8224
20. Backup Boot Sector: 8224
21. Reserved: 202046415431362020200000
22. Drive ID: 0x80
23. Reserved for NT: 0x00
24. Extended Boot Sig: 0x29
25. Serial Number: 0x07D00115
26. Volume Name: NO NAME
27. File System Type: FAT32
28. Boot Signature: 0xAA55

OK - some reported info is obviously bad (if the big fat sectors were that many it would occupy over 150GB for example) some may be of great value. Would like to begin by doing two things. (a) get a copy of the whole PBS (partition boot sector) and also a copy of the backup PBS.

So open WinHex and from Start Centre and then under Physical (not Logical) Drives open the slave drive.

From the Position menu "Go to Sector" and choose logical sector 63. Highlight the whole of that sector from "EB 58 90 ..." through "... 55 AA" and then from the Edit menu "Copy block" and choose "Into new file". Call it sec63.dat and save it to disk. Repeat the above with Sector 69 (which hopefully looks similar) so that you should have two 512 byte files called sec63.dat and sec69.dat. These are both backups for the time being. RClick on one of them and choose Send to Compressed Zip Folder then Rclick on the other dat file and drag it into this zip folder; choose to copy it there when the button is released. Upload this zip file here with your next reply.

Next go to sector 95 which should be the first FAT entry. Hopefully the first bytes of the sector are "F8 FF FF F0 ...". Then go to sector 9845 which if I have calculated correctly should be the start of the second FAT entry and should also start "F8 FF FF F0 ...". Then go to sector 19595 which hopefully is the start of the root directory. If so the prior sector 19594 will be all zeros (the end of FAT 2). The start of the root directory itself should have an appearance similar to the following. There should be a list of files (in existence or previously deleted); any starting with E5 (in bold below) are deleted file records.

57 49 4E 39 38 20 20 20 20 20 20 11 08 00 38 BA WIN98 ...8º
37 30 7B 30 00 00 38 BA 37 30 03 00 00 00 00 00 70{0..8º70......
E5 4F 4F 54 4C 4F 47 20 50 52 56 22 00 00 00 00 BOOTLOG PRV"....
00 00 C7 30 01 00 8A 7D C7 30 0E CA D0 22 01 00 ..Ç0..Š}Ç0.ÊÐ"..
43 4F 4D 4D 41 4E 44 20 43 4F 4D 20 00 00 00 00 COMMAND COM ....
00 00 3B 30 05 00 C0 B2 97 26 12 AE C2 6E 01 00 ..;0..À²—&.®Ân..
41 55 54 4F 45 58 45 43 42 41 54 20 00 27 23 BC AUTOEXECBAT .'#¼
37 30 CC 30 04 00 24 BC 37 30 33 A0 86 00 00 00 70Ì0..$¼703_†...
E5 52 55 4E 4C 4F 47 20 54 58 54 20 00 44 42 BB FRUNLOG TXT .DB»
37 30 37 30 01 00 4D BB 37 30 58 D6 F2 03 00 00 7070..M»70XÖò...

If any difficulty finding the start of the FATs using these parameters. First go to Sector 0 then go to Search and choose Hex Values. Type in F8FFFFF0 and enable Cond.: offset mod 512 = 0. This will search just the begining of each sector for that hex string. Repeatedly hitting F3 will repeat the search.

You can also search for Boot Signatures by modifying such a search to 55AA and using offset mod 512 = 510. Any sector ending 55 AA is almost certainly attempting to identify itself as a boot sector of some sort or another.

That's enough to be going on with for now methinks.

Progress so far: not good.
It must be so tedious for you to have to go into such step by step detail to keep me on track. This thread could become the outline for a new text book call WinHex for _______________. And this chapter can be called "Comedy of Errors".

I did the first part of locating blocks 63 and 69. Block 63 looked promising but there were a few more entries in the columns after the 55AA. Block 69 had very few entries and they were not similar to 63.

But I couldn't find a way to highlight the blocks. I know how to highlight; this much I can give myself credit for knowing how to do. But these blocks would not highlight for me despite all the methods I used to highlight. So I went on to the next step and chose from the Edit menu "Copy block" and chose Into New File.

I wondered why each block, which you said would be 512 bytes, took more than 14 minutes to copy. When I checked on the Properties of each file that I had saved, I could see that I had copied the entire slave drive of 9.5 GB's each time and not the block.
I have tried again, but I can't get it to highlight. Now what am I doing wrong? I will keep trying to highlight, but I am sending this now, in case you can figure out why the blocks won't allow themselves to be highlighted.
Sorry, to be such a poor student.

You could try RClicking on the hex tables and then choose Edit. Then enter the beginning offset and ending offset of the block you wish to higlight/define. On sector 63 these values would be 7E00 and 7FFF respectively and on sector 69, 8A00 and 8BFF respectively.

You could always just post the values here but then you wouldnt have the backup sectors to "play around with". HE HE - well apart from the whole drive of course!! ;)

Paul, I have sec63.dat and sec69.dat in a folder called Compressed (zipped) Files . I am going to attach this folder to this reply, but when I chose Browse to locate them, I see that they are located in C:Program Files/ WinHex/ Compressed (zipped) Files. Please let me know whether that location is accessible to you. If it is not, please let me know where I should locate the folder for you to get to it. They were zipped with WinRar.

In the meantime I will try to get on with the rest of my assignment to get to the other sectors you would like to examine.

Could you possibly figure out what I did to change the way the offset column information is displayed. I know it looked the same as your information does with numbers and letters the first time I opened it, but since then all I can see is numbers. [I noticed that when I right clicked on offset in the bottom of the window there was a choice to copy as EB58(hexadec)]. I would like to have my settings the same as yours are, but I must have inadvertantly changed them at some time.

Here is sec69.dat

Sorry, I will try to attach sec69.dat one more time

sec63.dat didn't make it - the sec63.zip file contains the sec69.zip file!

sec69 was hopefully going to have been a backup copy of the PBS but it is obviously not and is not going to help; it could have been the easy solution.

In layman's English what I am trying to do by searching for the actual start of the two FATs FAT1 and FAT2 is to confirm the figures so that sec63 can be edited with the correct numbers - since one cannot believe what is written in the current sector 63 (the current PBS).

Just clicking on the actual offsets column will toggle the values between hexadecimal(numbers and letters) and decimal - I think that is all you have done in that respect.

As for the highlighting all I can think of is that the color of the block is the same as the background. The block(highlight)color should be customizable from Options | General - in the bottom right half under "Block Background Color"; click on the ... (elipsis) to pick the color you want.

Also when highlighting or defining a block the actual numbers should appear in the status bar at the bottom. These can also be hex or decimal and will match the offset column format.

I don't quite understand why sec63.dat did not display properly, so I redid it in WinHex. It is now called tryagainsec63.zip and I hope it is the correct one this time.

Hi, I'm back having finished everything you asked for and I don't think things look too hopeful.

When I searched for F8 FF FF F0 there was only ONE occurrence of it. It was found in sector 7426449 and the offset began at 3802341888. The block ended at offset 3802342399. This block began with F8 FF FF FO 9A and ended with 6C 6C 6C 6C 6C 76 86.

When I searched for boot sector 55AA offset 512=510 there were more than 100 occurrences of that, as you expected there would be. (There may have been more because I had the option set at 100 files.) The first place that it appeared was at offset 510 and the last (recorded) place it was at offset 7321800702.

You also asked for Sector 95 information. It does start with F8 FF FF but the last two are not F0 as you want them to be, but they are reversed, 0F .

Unfortunately Sector 9845 is all 00 00 00
Sector 19594 has 00 00 as you expect, but 19595 is also all 00 00.

You didn't ask for this information, but I just kept scrolling down the sectors and the first Sector I could see where there was anything but 00 00 00 was at Sector 19599. All there was in that was FF FF FF 0F followed by lots of 00 00's
At Sector 19631 there were more lines with different numbers, followed by whole sectors of 00 00 00, then a few more sectors of only FF FF FF.

I didn't think I would give you any more useful information by continuing scrolling so I just closed up for the night.

I'm afraid I sent you a typo and the string for the start of the FATs should have been F8 FF FF 0F and not F8 FF FF F0 - so it does look like Sector 95 is the correct start of FAT1 and I'm sorry about that bit of a Wild Goose chase.

Now if we can find the start of FAT2 we can calculte the distance between them. And since FAT2 should be identical to FAT1 the same gap should let us find the start of the root directory - by using the correct start string F8FFFF0F this time.

Your PBS (sec63) certainly does look a bit odd at the start (the rest of it looks normal). It looks a bit like FAT16 and FAT32 were somehow superimposed - so if we can discover the drive's correct geometry there is some hope of editing it correctly and then replacing your own one with the edited version.

When I searched for F8 FF FF 0F today, 31 occurences of it showed up.

The only way I could think of to show you the interplay between them and the 55AA occurences which I searched yesterday, was to put them both into a .pos file and zip them to you. I called the file :Drive Geometry both WinHex searches.zip. There were a total of 135 or 136 notations. In my layman's mind this is what I assumed you meant by Disk Geometry.

If this does not show you what you need to know, then (once again) please outline the correct procedure to follow.

Way back in PM I think I saw something also called Disk Geometry. But I may be confusing the two things.

From the uploaded .pos file and from previous info it looks likely that:-
FAT1 starts at sector 95
FAT2 starts at sector 9851
Root Direcory starts at sector 19607

Based on:- Each FAT containing 9756 sectors and there being 63 "hidden" sectors on the drive and there being 32 "reserved" sectors on the drive.

Can you confirm that:-
Sector 95 is identical to sector 9851 and that both start F8 FF FF 0F.
Sector 19606 is full of zeros
Sector 19607 has a sequence of file entries in it as previously outlined.

If so we are ready to edit your PBS. In anticipation of this you will need a hex editor that can use to write to the disk. WinHex will only do this if paid-for but there is another handy free application from the win2K resource kit (a small download) called disk probe which can do this; so perhaps you could lay your hands on that download from http://www.petri.co.il/download_free_reskit_tools.htm and if the above info confirms OK I will upload an edited PBS that we can then write to your drive using Disk Probe.

I know you have spent time looking for 55AA disk signatures but, for the moment anyway, these are just a distraction. I have had a couple of glasses of wine this evening so I hope my mathematics is OK. ;)

Disk Geometry just relates to the way a disk is organised and referenced. Historically this was done using CHS values for the number of Cylinders, Heads and Sectors. This was later changed from a literal CHS specification to a virtual CHS specification and later on to LBA or Logical Block Addressing, whereby the whole disk is referenced using numbers - be they hex or decimal. LBA is necessary to define the large HDDs found everywhere nowadays. DOS still uses CHS so both systems have to exist in parallel.

Paul, I am sure your head is clearer, despite the wine, than mine will ever be in managing WinHex. I thought I would follow the information in Help to compare sector 95 with 9851 using File Manager. After many attempts, I still couldn't get it right, so I am attaching each sector as a zip file and hoping that you will be able to do the comparison between them at your end.

Sector 19606 was full of 00 00 00 as you thought.

As for sector 19607, I assumed that you wanted me to compare that with the information you had previously sent for sector 19595, (when you guesstimated that 19595 would be the start of the Root directory.)

19607 does not really look like the data you sent, so I zipped that up as well, and I am letting you be the judge.

To add to the ongoing "comedy of errors", somewhere along the way, I managed to switch the view to the hexadecimal, so I no longer see an offset column containing only numbers. In fact, there isn't even an offset column. The Access column took its place.

Sorry, to make things so confusing.

Sector 95 attached

sector 9851 attached

OK. Sector 19607 is the start of the root directory so now we should have all the parameters needed to edit the PBS. I have done so in the attached zipped Sector63.dsk file. This needs to be used to replace Sector63 on the Slave HDD (Physical Drive 1) - keep away from all logical volumes, partitions and drives while we do all this so that no confusion can occur. Before writing to the drive double-check that it is a Physical Drive and that it is the Slave and not the Master that is being written to. You will be presented with a couple of confirmation dialogs in any case.

Before doing anything else (a) ensure you have a copy of your problem partition backed up on the Master (you may have done so already) and (b) make sure you have the two Partition Magic Floppy "Rescue Diskettes" AND THAT THEY WORK; check that you can boot to them and that the program opens OK. PM may be needed in the event that WinXP doesnt like the changes, runs Chkdsk, etc. In that case it can be used to hide the partition and then get back into your current Windows as if the partition doesn't exist; it can then be accessed by editing tools.

Unzip Sector63.dsk and save it to where you can easily find it again - the root of C might be a good place.

Download and open Disk Probe.

On the Drives Menu choose Physical Drive.
Double click on PhysicalDrive1.
It should then disappear from the list box and appear as Handle0.
Leave Read Only enabled and click "Set Active", which will then become grayed.
Click OK.
From the File Menu choose Open.
Browse to my Sector63.dsk file and Open it.
It should appear into view and you will know it is my copy by the label at the end of the fifth line!
From the Sectors Menu choose Write.
Say Yes to the confirmation dialog about changing from Read to Write mode.
Handle 0 should show PhysicalDrive1
Enter 63 as the "Starting Sector to write Data to".
Hit "Write It".
The final warning should read. "Are you sure you want to permanently overwrite the data in Sector 63 on the device PhysicalDrive1". If you are completely happy you are writing to the correct place its now your decision because we can take no responsibility if it goes bad. If ready, click Yes.

That should, hopefully, be that. You can then repeat the procedure but write the same sector data to sector 69. This creates the edited sector in its correct backup location - one that was corrupt in any case. Reboot and see if windows now sees its slave. As long as there are no bad sectors in the early parts of the drive I would be hopeful that all will be well. If not then there is recovery software which (given the intact-looking nature of the FATs and root directory) should be able to retrieve any critical files.

----

Incidentally, while experimenting on my own system I changed some parameters in a PBS and on rebooting WinXP did a lot of checking but finally loaded after asking me it it could go ahead. The modified partition had been changed from FAT32 to FAT16!! This is part of what had happened to you and may explain that after whatever caused the initial corruption, WinXP converted the type to FAT16 in the partition table record in the mbr (master boot record). Quite strange but interesting.

Disk Probe is great in many respects. In some ways it is easier to use because it only displays one complete sector at a time. In other ways it can take a lot of experimenting to get it to do what you want. It has no "bells and whistles" but it is free of course. It was originally designed for WinNT and prefers working with FAT16 than FAT32 at a high level. It is however a low level editor so the FAT version doesn't affect it when it reads or writes to disk in this fashion.

For those to whom such things are of interest, the first 6 lines of the modified PBS now look as follows for this FAT32 volume. There is then a breakdown of what the values mean. Other formats have a different layout.

Offset___ 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F
00000000 EB 58 90 4D 53 57 49 4E 34 2E 31 00 02 10 20 00
00000010 02 00 00 00 00 F8 00 00 3F 00 FF 00 3F 00 00 00
00000020 9D F1 30 01 1C 26 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00
00000030 01 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000040 80 00 29 8B 3B CD 40 4B 4F 4D 53 4B 49 4D 41 44
00000050 45 20 46 41 54 33 32 20 20 20 FA 33 C9 8E D1 BC

00-02 = EB 58 90 = Processor instruction to jump 0x58 offsets (thus to resume the executable code at offset 0x5A) not in red above. That executable code continues to the end of boot sector marker 55 AA.

03-0A = 4D 53 57 49 4E 34 2E 31 = "MSWIN4.1" = OEM name by that which created the partition.

BPB (BIOS PARAMETER BLOCK BEGINS)
0B-0C = 00 02 = 0x200 = 512 Bytes per sector.

0D = 10 = 0x10 = 16 Sectors per cluster.

0E-0F = 20 00 = 0x20 = 32 Reserved Sectors. (The number of sectors allocated for the partition boot sector to use and the first of which is the PBS or sector 63 of this hdd. The first FAT table begins immediately after these sectors).

10 = 02 = 0x02 = 2 FAT Tables

11-12 = 00 00 = 0x00 = 0 Root entries (Not used by FAT32 for which there are unlimited numbers of entries).

13-14 = 00 00 = 0x00 = 0 Sectors on a small FAT16 partition. If zero then the value for a large partition is used later on.

15 = F8 (the hex code for the media descriptor; F8 = a hard drive).

16-17 = 00 00 = 0x00 = 0 Sectors in each FAT of a small FAT16 partition. If zero then the value for a large FAT partition is used later on.

18-19 = 3F 00 = 0x3F = 63 Sectors per Track (for disks that use INT 13h)

1A-1B = FF 00 = 0xFF = 255 Heads (for disks that use INT 13h)

1C-1F = 3F 00 00 00 = 0x3F = 63 Hidden Sectors (the number of sectors on the physical drive prior to the start of the PBS).

20-23 = 9D F1 30 01 = 0x130F19D = 19984797 Sectors (for a large partition).

(FAT32 SECTION BEGINS)
24-27 = 1C 26 00 00 = 0X261C = 9756 Sectors per FAT (for a large partition).

28-29 = 00 00 = 0x00 = 0 "Flags" (This sets the Active FAT and whether mirroring is used; a value of 0 uses FAT1 and no mirroring)

2A-2B = 00 00 = 0x00 = 0 "Version" (For future FAT32 drivers; this should currently be set to 0 and if not zero current Windows will fail to mount the volume).

2C-2F = 02 00 00 00 = 0x02 = 2 (The first cluster used by the root directory; usually set to the 2nd cluster).

30-31 = 01 00 = 0x01 = 1 (The sector after the PBS where FSInfo is stored. This is dynamically updated every time the partition is written-to. There is a backup of it after the backup PBS but which is not dynamically updated).

32-33 = 06 00 = 0x06 = 6 (The sector after the PBS where the backup PBS is stored).

34-3F = 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 (A reserved area for future developments).

EBPB (EXTENDED BIOS PARAMETER BLOCK)
40 = 80 = 0x80 = 128. (This is the BIOS identity of the drive in question. Theoretically the slave would be 0x81 = 129 but in fact all HDDs have the value of 80 here, since it is only relevant to the BIOS if it is the drive that has been booted to).

41 = 00 = 0x00 = 0. This is unused and should always be zero for FAT32.

42 = 29 = 0x29 = the hex code for "The extended boot signature"; this must be 0x28 or 0x29 for Win2K - and presumably WinXP too.

43-46 = 8B 3B CD 40 = 0x40CD3B8B = 1087191947 which is the volume's serial number created from an algorithm at creation time and distinguishes it uniquely to the OS from other partitions.

47-51 = 4B 4F 4D 53 4B 49 4D 41 44 45 20 = "KOMSKIMADE " = Volume Label (this can also be stored separately or uniquely in the root directory as a specail file with no data).

52-59 = 46 41 54 33 32 20 20 20 = "FAT32   " = The FAT format in use. This describes the format to us but isn't used by windows.

RESUMPTION OF MACHINE CODE.
5A-1FD = The remainder of the executable bootstrap code.

1FE-1FF = 55 AA = 0xAA55 = Boot signature (The "magic number" which in binary looks like the enantiomorphic 10101010 01010101).

Paul, before I actually do what you have outlined, here are a few things I should mention.

This never came up before, but on this new fangled machine of mine, there is no floppy drive. I was assured by Dell, that I did not need one; their package did not include one, and I just went along.
So I have never created the P.M. Rescue Diskettes. You said:

"Before doing anything else (a) ensure you have a copy of your problem partition backed up on the Master (you may have done so already) and (b) make sure you have the two Partition Magic Floppy "Rescue Diskettes" AND THAT THEY WORK; check that you can boot to them and that the program opens OK. PM may be needed in the event that WinXP doesnt like the changes, runs Chkdsk, etc. In that case it can be used to hide the partition and then get back into your current Windows as if the partition doesn't exist; it can then be accessed by editing tools."

I do have a folder containing a Disk Image of the problem slave disk backed up on the Master Drive. It is an Image File and properties show it to contain 9.6GB, but I have never been able to confirm just what is in there.
So, all I can do is have faith that it is an accurate image.

I will be familiarizing myself with using DiskProbe, but won't actually do anything final until I hear from you again, telling me that I should go ahead despite not being able to confirm your two precautionary warnings.

In the absence of a floppy drive it would be possible to add Partition Magic and Drive Image to a BartPE CD (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) but that is not all that simple to do and would be the start of a brand new learning curve.

The main thing to have is a backup image file on the Master HDD - and you appear to have that. BTW, is it a .pqi Drive Image File? or was it made using other software? If its a Drive Image file you may well be able to access the image using Image Explorer and see what is in the image file and even restore files from it.

I don't think that just editing the PBS as outlined should result in an unbootable system - though it is possible that WinXP may be slow to complete its checks and balances the first time you reboot. At worst you can wipe the slave drive and then reimage your image file to get back to where we are now.

Floppy drives still have their place nowdays IMHO - though a functioning bootable emergency CD is probably an exceptable alternative. If one's BIOS support it, booting from a USB pen drive could be another way of "getting into" one's pc in emergencies.

I would be inclined to go ahead with restoring the PBS; just take especial care that you do not write anything to the master drive.

"The main thing to have is a backup image file on the Master HDD - and you appear to have that. BTW, is it a .pqi Drive Image File? or was it made using other software? If its a Drive Image file you may well be able to access the image using Image Explorer and see what is in the image file and even restore files from it."


We used GetDataBack for the Drive Image following the directions you laid out. Does this have the Image Explorer program to access the files which you are talking about above. Or is it another program.

PQ's (now Symantec's) Image Explorer comes bundled with Drive Image, which is a useful program for examining the .pqi files made by Drive Image and for selectively restoring any files in that image file - either collectively or individually. They are not literal clones of the original such as the files made by Runtime's GDB, which can be reinstated using a hex editor (such as Disk Probe or Tiny Hexer or the paid-for versions of WinHex or Runtime's Explorer for FAT).

There's no guarantee that PQ's Image Explorer would be able to restore from an image of a corrupt partition in any case. Runtimes's Explorer for FAT is, in reality, just another Hex Editor.

High level programs such as Drive Image or Ghost can restore the whole partition(s) as well as update any partition tables or boot sectors as necessary and as part of the process. Restoring clones manually would require one to also manually edit the partition table in the MBR using something like PQedit or a hex editor.

Put simply - your clone CAN BE USED to reinstate your data. A clone of the whole physical drive would be better than one of just the partition on it since the clone of the whole drive would also include the MBR and the partition tables inside it. Of course, if it is just a clone of the single logical volume or partition on the slave, you could make an additional copy of just the first 63 sectors of that physical drive and use that as a supplementary backup of the MBR and partition tables.

To know whether your clone is the partition or the drive just compare the number of sectors in the file with the number of sectors on the drive by opening both the file and the drive in WinHex. The partition has 19984797 sectors and the drive should have a minimum of 19984860.

Happy Hunting.

One thing I was forgetting is that WinHex will report the file size in pages rather than sectors. You would need to drag the file's window to exactly the same size as a sector for the pages to match sectors. Alternatively, compare the number of bytes in the file from the Left Column of Data under File Size, with the number of bytes in the same column for the partition's Total Capacity. BTW - a 64 sector (0 thru 63)difference would equal 32768 bytes.

Paul, I am going to be very careful and check myself every step of the way, to make sure I don't mess up by rushing things at the end of this long training period you have given me.

It seems that, for the next few days there are some very urgent personal matters that I must attend to which will limit my time on the computer considerably. You may not hear from me again until the weekend by which time I hope I can report back with a good conclusion.

Please forgive me for the interruption, but I have no choice but to attend to them immediately.

As always, I look forward to your guidance in finishing this project successfully.
plp

No Problem - Whenever.

Congratulations, Paul. It worked. I can now access Slave drive G: from the Primary Hard Drive. The Primary Hard Drive never missed a beat. It just opened as usual after I rebooted.

You did a prodigious job of tutoring me to accomplish this. To say thank you again, would be an understatement, but what else can I say.

Now I am back to where I started before I messed up using Partition Magic to try to make the Slave Drive bootable. The question remains, is there any way to make the Slave bootable either using PM correctly, this time, or any other way.

If the Slave still contains Windows 98 and FAT32, would it have to be hidden from XP if it were bootable?

If you still have time to carry on this new project, I would be much obliged.

That's great - really satisfying from my own point of view. It's relatively easy to do on my own setup since I know what I'm looking for but not so easy at a long distance since if the mathematics are out by one sector (or one critical byte) then the whole thing fails - or worse.

Bootability with multiple HDDs:- (And to be clear here and in sync with how MS describes things ... the term system partition is used for the active partition and the term boot partition for the partition containing the relevant windows installation). (To rephrase: the system partition will look for a boot partition containing a system windows/winnt/etc folder).
A windows HDD system partition is bootable if:

The MBR (Sector0) of the HDD has not been corrupted by accident, a boot sector virus, drive overlay software, etc.
Only one of the four partition tables in its MBR is marked as active (0x80).
The same partition table does not show the format as being hidden (by its format-type being incremented by 1).
The partition boot sector (nor msdos.sys in some multiboot scenarios) of the same system partition has not been corrupted.
The relevant windows (system folder) on the boot partition (as opposed to the system partition) can be correctly found and identified by the boot process and the boot files in the active, or system, partition.
The BIOS selects the relevant HDD as the bootable device at boot-time. {Each HDD can have one visible and active or system partition on it without any conflict - No HDD should have more than one active partition - And windows (especially Win9X) "doesn't like" multiple visible primary partitions of any type on one HDD}.
* NB That manually setting a partition as that HDD's active partition may automatically hide any other primary partitions on that HDD and (he he he ;) ) have other untoward or unexpected results.


So to boot to the slave and its Win98 installation - the simple manual thing to do is to go into the BIOS setup and change the boot order of the HDD from HDD0 to HDD1 - if your BIOS will allow this. This is awkward if it is something you want to do on a regular basis but changes no structures on the HDDs themselves.

You could alternatively reverse the master and the slave drives and have the same effect. In this reversed configuration you could then boot to the WinXP CD and run a Repair Installation of XP now sitting on the slave, and which would setup a dual boot menu on the master (the current slave) for you to select from at boot time.

Finally you could use a boot manager such as Boot Magic, BootIt NG or XOSL (with increasing flexibility but also increasing user unfriendliness). All of these overlay the MBR of the boot drive chosen in the bios and take over the boot management by using a whole variety of techniques. These techniques revolve around temporarily (for just that boot) altering the active and hidden status of both primary and logical partitions or by "fooling" the bootstrap process into believing this.

I guess you have learned one golden rule and that is to BACKUP before using any partition modifying utilities. It's wise to backup regularly anyway but, IMHO, mandatory before using such utilities - all of which, of course, advise this as well. And backup the really important stuff onto removable media.

Happy booting - :D

There is a lot to digest here, but I couldn't help taking a peek at your reply to set my mind at ease that it could still be done.

So after much careful reading and re-reading of your information, I'll get back to you with my "inevitable" questions. :confused:

I'll be you just can't wait!:rolleyes:

Although it will always seem to me that you performed a "feat of magic", when you led me through the steps to correct the problem, I also realize that those mathematical calculations were the result of a skill and precision that I was very lucky to have chanced upon.

As for your comments on Bootablility these are my questions so far.

I. Making a Backup before starting to tinker with changes to make the Slave bootable.

Is the Image file I made with GDB (when the Slave was still not accessible to XP), a good enough backup to rely on now before trying to make the Slave bootable?

Or should I just delete that Image now that I have more direct access thru My Computer to G: (aka:KOMSKIMADE) and then make a new image with GDB.
Would it be better to do it with Ghost?

II. In its present state (considering the corrections you made to G: so far), do you think it qualifies as a bootable partition or would you have to get more details from me to know if it meets all the requirements.

III. Of the methods you suggested, and since I do already have Boot Magic, I would like to use that as the Boot Manager. But, ("once bitten, twice shy,") I would not dare to use it again, without some direction because of the disasterous results the first time.

Is the Image file I made with GDB (when the Slave was still not accessible to XP), a good enough backup to rely on now before trying to make the Slave bootable?

That image is a literal byte-by-byte clone and in that sense it is certainly good enough. It could be easily reinstated using the full paid-for version of WinHex. That image's PBS is still bad so it would also need "repairing" just like the original. It is too big for the free Diskprobe to restore in one go and would have to be split into parts first and all of that would be a bit messy. Both of these approaches would still be utilising a very large file; an image file that would be compressed by other imaging software designed for the task.

Since you are likely to be "playing with" partition structures and also just to have an easy and flexible way of creating and restoring partitions I would recommend that you get your hands on some specific imaging software: Drive Image, Ghost, Acronis, Image Maker, BootIt NG and so on.

Your slave drive is not currently the boot device BUT IT IS BOOTABLE AS THINGS STAND and you don't need to modify its parameters at all. Just go into your BIOS setup and change the boot order from HDD0 to HDD1 to confirm this. Change the BIOS setup back to boot from HDD0 to get back to where you are now.

Personally I would completely reverse the master and slave drives and then run a repair installation of WinXP to set-up a dual boot menu rather than use Boot Magic or other boot managers. Not sure how important the WinXP installation is to you but the other approach would be to copy the Win98 partition from the slave to a repartitioned master and then clean install WinXP into another partition on that drive. You could then use the slave for backups - a safer place for them. The safest place for backups is on quality removable media such as CD or Tape.

As a minimum backup your personal DATA on removable media. OSes can always be reinstalled - lost data is gone forever.

Seriously consider getting yourself a floppy drive - they are dirt cheap, easy to install and the easiest way to access your system with a number of partition/disk-management utilities - some of which can be "real life-savers" when things go wrong.

I would like to report on two of your suggestions:

" Just go into your BIOS setup and change the boot order from HDD0 to HDD1 to confirm that (slave)......is bootable. Change the BIOS setup back to boot from HDD0 to get back to where you are now."

I couldn't change the boot order sequence.
Using F12 at bootup, I got into the Drive Configuration screen where I can see listed the Primary Master Hard Drive and the Primary Slave Hard Drive as well as the two Optical Drives.

When I click Boot Sequence, the screen that opens lists only Hard DriveC: and Ide CD Rom device. There is no choice for Hard Drive G:in the boot order sequence.

"Not sure how important the WinXP installation is to you but the other approach would be to copy the Win98 partition from the slave to a repartitioned master and then clean install WinXP into another partition on that drive. You could then use the slave for backups - a safer place for them."

The XP installation is quite important to me, because, by now I have customized it and would not relish the idea of reinstalling it.

To review: this is my situation now.

Dell Tech support helped me create partitions on the computer. After formatting, we created the following partitions on the Primary Master:
1. Utility Partition (with a small number of MB) I don't recall how many and don't think there is anything on this Utility Partition. (It was the Tech's suggestion.)

2. 15 GB Partition, which he left blank, but on which I later used Partition Magic to install the Win98SE operating system from my old installation CD. This is where I had intended to copy all the data that is currently on the Slave drive. It is still completely blank except for the Win98SE operating system.

3. 64.5 GB Partition where XP is now installed.

At the moment the 15GB and the 65GB partitions are hidden from each other, and we have it set with Partition Magic, that we can choose which one to boot to. So far the only reason we boot to the 15GB partition is to use our scanner because there are no drivers for it that will work with anything but Win98, 95 and ME.

Do these two partitions on the Master Drive have to remain hidden from each other because one is FAT32 and the other is NTFS?

4. The Second (Slave)10GB Hard Drive, as you know, contains all the data from our old computer.

Now that the Slave is viewable by C:, I would like to use a variation of your suggestion and copy the data from the Slave to the existing 15 GB partition (on the Master) and just leave XP as it is now.

Your idea of using the slave for backups is very acceptable. Should it be bootable, and how to best do this?
I will look into getting a floppy drive.

Sorry but need more information.

Can you confirm that the physical positions of the three partitions on the master are first "the utility" then "the Win98 for scanner" then "the one for WinXP"?
Is the "utility" partition fat or ntfs and is it hidden or visible and how many MB?
Are all three partitions on the master designated as primary partitions?
Which of the three partitions on the master contains the files boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com in its root.
Which of the three partitions on the master contains the files io.sys and command.com in its root.


In order to switch between the Win98 and WinXP partitions on the master you stated that you use PM to hide/unhide them. Do you actually mean change which is the active partition on that HDD by using PM?

Also FYI there's no need to set as hidden any NTFS partition just to hide them from Win9X. Win9X will treat all NTFS partitions as hidden - those OSes cannot see NTFS partitions whether set as hidden or not. However, when you reset the active partition on the master all other PRIMARY partitions would normally automatically be hidden on that HDD.

It would seem logical to me to copy the partition on the slave to where you currently have your Win98 installation (which is just there to use a scanner) and install the scanner on to the copied installation if it is not already on it. Then when set for booting into Win98 on the master and with WinXP set as visible (but being de facto hidden by being NTFS) run a repair installation of WinXP, which would set up a dual boot menu for you as part of the process. Then you could scrub the stuff on the slave and use it as you desire.

An alternative, assuming the utility partition is really not needed, would be to delete "the utility partition" and "the Win98 for scanner partition" and copy your slave partition to the start of the master; then create a new "utility partition" between the copied partition and WinXP. With the copied partition working OK, then run the repair of WinXP as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Finally consider making a decent image of the Win9X partition on the master and, if there is enough room, make another image of the WinXP partition on the slave using Drive Image, Ghost, etc - or of burning these images to CD or DVD.

Here is a partial answer to your first question, which I obtained through Partition Information from PM. The Master is referred to as Drive I. You will notice that NTFS comes before WIN98 and not after it, as in my first description it.
Sorry if it looks crowded but I had to squeeze the table in.

Volume PartType Status Size(MB)ParSec # StartSector TotalSector
*.DellUtility Dell Pri 39.2 0 0 63 80,262
C: NTFS Pri,Boot61247.8 0 1 80,325 125,435,520
*.WIN98 Hid.FAT Pri 15006.0 2 125,515,845 30,372,345

Disk Geometry Information: Cylinders 9726 Heads255 Sectors/Track:63

Volume # Boot BCyl Head Sect FS ECyl Head Sect
Dell Utility 0 00 0 1 1 DE 4 254 63
1 80 5 0 1 07 1023 254 63
WIN98 2 00 1023 0 1 1C 1023 254 63

I do not know where to look for the specific files you are asking about. Perhaps this configuration will give you some clue or otherwise I would need some clues as to where to look for them.

I am now going to boot into WIN98 and look at this same partition information as it appears while in WIN98 to see if there are any differences. I will send it in a separate reply.
Put more accurately, we have it set so that when we want to switch between XP and 98 we choose PQBoot for Windows from Program Files and put the dot next to the system we want to boot to and select Restart. I am not sure whether that means we unhide it or make it active.

The Master Drive has three primary partitions.
(a)39MB Dell hidden utility partition for running Dell diagnostics.
(b)59.8GB NTFS partition for WinXP.
(c)14.5GB FAT partition for Win98 (hidden at the time the info was read).

The Slave Drive has one primary partition.
(a)10GB FAT partition for Win98 from other pc.

Re-reading this thread I see that the slave has a partition that was from an installation on another PC. Although it is the active (and technically bootable partition) on that drive I would stay away from trying to boot to it at all from this PC - it can work but is more likely "to be messy". Once you have got your data safely off the slave and if you are not intending to put it back into the other computer that it came from then consider cleaning it up to use as a data or backup partition. Just delete the partition on it using PM and then create a new logical partition on it to use as you think fit.

If PQboot is working for you then there is no need to change the way you dual boot. The only reason I can think of to change things would be if you wanted WinXP to actually see the Win98 installation which is just used for your scanner. Perhaps you should resize that FAT partition down to 1 or 2 GB and then create one or more logical partitions in the unallocated space which would be thus made available at the end of the drive. If this or these partitions were formatted then as FAT then both Win98 and WinXP would be able to both see and share them.

The boot files would be in the root of the active partition from which the computer is booting. Since in your situation WinXP is booting from the second partition ntldr etc will be there and io.sys etc will be in the root of the third partition for booting up Win98 when PQboot makes that the active partition. In a dual boot scenario setup by Windows both sets of files can be in the same partition and the selection of the boot choice at startup determines which ones are actually utilised.

There are now two replies from you that I am trying to assimilate. I will start with the latest one since you had more information from me by that time.

As you surmised, when I booted into the WIN98 partition on the Master Drive, FAT 32 showed up as "Pri,Boot" and the "NTFS was now hidden".

boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com were found in the root of XP.

Do you think there is actually any data in the Dell utility partition for running Dell diagnostics. How would it have gotten in there? Does it go there by default when you reinstall XP. Is it necessary that it be there?

Now back to your newest comments:

"Re-reading this thread I see that the slave has a partition that was from an installation on another PC. Although it is the active (and technically bootable partition) on that drive I would stay away from trying to boot to it at all from this PC - it can work but is more likely "to be messy"."
Question:-----Could that be the reason that I ran into trouble when I used PM to try to make it bootable?......
************************************************** **********************

"Once you have got your data safely off the slave and if you are not intending to put it back into the other computer that it came from then consider cleaning it up to use as a data or backup partition."

---I do intend to use it as a data or backup partition." ----

************************************************** ************

" If PQboot is working for you then there is no need to change the way you dual boot. The only reason I can think of to change things would be if you wanted WinXP to actually see the Win98 installation which is just used for your scanner."

"Perhaps you should resize that FAT partition down to 1 or 2 GB and then create one or more logical partitions in the unallocated space which would be thus made available at the end of the drive. If this or these partitions were formatted then as FAT then both Win98 and WinXP would be able to both see and share them.

-------I do prefer for XP to be able to see the WIN98 installation. Although it is now being used just for the scanner, this is where I intend to copy the Win98 data from the Slave before cleaning up the Slave . Can you explain the difference between leaving it where it is now and adding the data to it and your suggestion above. Why would doing it as you suggest above, then make it possible for both Win98 and WinXP to be able to see and share the data. Does it have to do with changing it to a logical vs being a primary partition as it is now?

Since the scanner has its own drivers and there do not seem to be any XP drivers for it, would it conflict with XP if they were not hidden from each other as they now are?
************************************************** *******************

"In a dual boot scenario setup by Windows both sets of files can be in the same partition and the selection of the boot choice at startup determines which ones are actually utilised."

-----Is this still a possiblity without having to format WinXP?......
************************************************** ********************
Thanks for carrying on with :confused:me:confused: until my next set of questions.

The hidden Dell partition (http://tabian.rink.ac.th/mongkol/Web/DELL/DOCS/4400IT_E/diag.htm) (maybe your's is slightly different) can be used to run hardware diagnostics by selecting the appropriate key at startup. In my experience it is not mandatory to have it and it can be restored from the Dell recovery CD or from an image file made of the partition and the same diagnostics could be run from floppies (if you had a floppy drive) and maybe even directly from the CD. It would have been put there at the factory and you can replace it with a full factory restore by choosing the correct options when running such a CD restore.

As things stand (that is to say with no way of running PM from floppies) you would have no way of correcting any partition (or other) changes made from within Windows nor would you be able to boot to any startup diskette and regain access to a non-bootable hard drive.

I don't think that attempting to boot from the slave is, per se, what caused the corruption especially since it never got to try to boot and which is when all the original hardware configurations would need to be reinitialised. More likely there was some other glitch and quite possibly because that drive was very full at the time. PM likes to have enough space in which to operate and I have certainly seen it corrupt processes, such as merging partitions, when both of them were very full.

It also occurs to me that you may not be able to run a Repair Installation (http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm#Warning1) of WinXP or even boot to the CD and choose the recovery console from your proprietary (Dell) CD. This makes me reluctant to make certain suggestions.

The way PQboot for Windows works is to change the active partition and hide all other primary partitions as part of the process. So the only "easy" way to use it to boot to WinXP and still see the Win98 partition is to not install Win98 on a primary partition. Instead you would need a small primary FAT partition (you could use the Dell partition reformatted as FAT or another small partition after the WinXP one). This would only be used as a boot partition but you would then need to choose the Customise option when installing Win98 from it so that the Win98 files themselves go onto a logical partition elsewhere. This is an example of the sytem (active) partition and the boot (windows folder) partition not being one and the same; you would start Win98 from the small active primary partition but open it in a logical partition. Thus when using PQboot to boot WinXP, the small boot partition would be hidden but all the files used by Windows 98 would be visible on its logical partition.

Since this would involve a reinstallation of Win98 (which I wouldn't suggest without a startup boot diskette) I would recommend my earlier suggestion of resizing the current Win98 partition and adding a common logical partition after it. There's no need for WinXP to see the Windows files themselves - what you need to see are the data files (the scanned documents and so on) - and these could be sited on the logical partition whilst running Win98 and still be there for WinXP when you boot to it.

Since the scanner has its own drivers and there do not seem to be any XP drivers for it, would it conflict with XP if they were not hidden from each other as they now are? No conflict hidden or not; each OS uses its own drivers independently of the other regardless of visibility.

"In a dual boot scenario setup by Windows both sets of files can be in the same partition and the selection of the boot choice at startup determines which ones are actually utilised." --Is this still a possiblity without having to format WinXP? You wouldnt need to format the installation but as a minimum one would need to run a Repair Installation or use the Recovery console; but, as mentioned above, I doubt if you can do this from a Dell recovery CD; you would need a retail version of WinXP to do this AFAIK. Restoring proprietary versions of Windows limits one's flexibility - with some "big names" being less versatile than others.

Three other alternatives for visualising 98 from XP.
(1) Having booted to XP using PQboot for Windows, run PM and under the advanced options choose to unhide the Win98 partition; the computer should then reboot to achieve this. Running PQboot again would do its normal thing.
(2) Get hold of BootIt NG. It has an advanced set up boot menus to allow selective hiding and booting of partitons. Not all that user friendly to use but you could also use it to make and restore image files.
(3) Run PQboot (for DOS) from a properly configured floppy. This has a variety of switches which, I think, can show all paritions etc. Only for a techie and not user friendly at all and need a floppy drive.

Final personal note. I dont really like boot managers such as Boot Magic or BootIt NG which overlay the MBR and get installed on a partition somewhere; I like to have the MBR executable code in its original state or have a floppy facility for restoring it. PQboot is a boot manager that doesn't overlay but just alters, as a one off, the partition tables of the MBR instead of you having to do it all manually.

I did boot to the Dell utility partition from the hard drive just to see what it contained and it has the same diagnostics options as are on the Dell Resource CD. I think I would just leave that partition as it is.

There is a lot to think about from your latest suggestions and the links in it were also very helpful.
However, I am not sure that I fully understood the options (and their disadvantages) which you presented. You said:

"The way PQboot for Windows works is to change the active partition and hide all other primary partitions as part of the process. So the only "easy" way to use it to boot to WinXP and still see the Win98 partition is to not install Win98 on a primary partition. Instead you would need a small primary FAT partition (you could use the Dell partition reformatted as FAT or another small partition after the WinXP one). This would only be used as a boot partition but you would then need to choose the Customise option when installing Win98 from it so that the Win98 files themselves go onto a logical partition elsewhere. This is an example of the sytem (active) partition and the boot (windows folder) partition not being one and the same; you would start Win98 from the small active primary partition but open it in a logical partition. Thus when using PQboot to boot WinXP, the small boot partition would be hidden but all the files used by Windows 98 would be visible on its logical partition.
Since this would involve a reinstallation of Win98 (which I wouldn't suggest without a startup boot diskette"..

From the above passage I got the impression that this was the way to go, but then you pointed out that you wouldn't do it without a startup boot diskette. Why?

I do have the Dell Windows 98 Installation CD which I used to install the OS onto that partition originally. When I did that I didn't (couldn't) use the startup boot diskette. Will that be a problem setting up this arrangement?

It is not clear is how I would go about separating the current Win98 partition (where the scanner is now installed) so I could start Win98 from the small active primary partition but open it in a logical partition.

Should I copy the data from the Win98 Slave Drive onto the Win98 partition (in the Master Drive) before it is separated or wait until it is divided.

All things being considered, is this your most feasible suggestion:

"I would recommend my earlier suggestion of resizing the current Win98 partition and adding a common logical partition after it. There's no need for WinXP to see the Windows files themselves - what you need to see are the data files (the scanned documents and so on) - and these could be sited on the logical partition whilst running Win98 and still be there for WinXP when you boot to it."

Did I understand correctly that this could be done with PM.

Could you please summarize the steps that I will be following (if the choices I seemingly have accepted are all compatible). Are there any risks or consequences that I have overlooked?

but then you pointed out that you wouldn't do it without a startup boot diskette. Why? If you are careful then it can be done but if you lose the ability to boot into an Operating System at any stage you will be lost since you wont be able to reset the WinXP installation active and "get back into it". Nor could you access your system to reinstall Win98 if the installation of Win98 went astray in any way. If you had a retail version of the XP CD then all of this would be less of a problem but with the Dell CD, AFAIK, you can only run a restoration of the whole installation and not a repair installation "over" the current one. Simple installations of one OS onto one partition are just fine but once you start "playing around" you must be able to get back into your pc and be able to use Partition Magic or DOS commands either from boot floppies or a bootable utililty CD.

In addition it is now clear that you also have a Dell Win98 install CD, which limits the setup possibilities for that OS as well.

Basically you can set just one partition as active and then (regardless of where it is but with all other primary partitions hidden) the Dell installation CDs will then install the OS into that partition. You can do this with either the WinXP or the Win98 Dell CDs but without the retail versions you just don't have the flexibility. AFAIK, each time you will lose all data on that partition.

Forget about trying to activate the slave partition on this pc. Just get all the data you need from it.

I suggest booting into WinXP.

Run PM and first resize the hidden Win98 partition down to say 2GB (2,000MB). Highlight the relevant partion, choose resize and follow the wizard.

Then highlight the unallocated space liberated and choose create. I suggest you use just half of it to create one logical partition in FAT32 format. Just leave the remaining unallocated space for now; you can always later enlarge a partition or create a new one in it as required; it gives you a bit of slack for the future.

Click Apply and let PM make the changes, rebooting if prompted.

Later, when booted into Win98, save your relevant data onto the new logical partition you have just created. Reboot into WinXP and check that this data is now accessible to you. If all is well you can move, say My Documents, onto this "data partition" from both OSes such that both can utilise the same data files. I say later, because I would do this after there are no visible primary partitions on the slave drive. When booted into Win98 the slave will be always be Drive D if it is a visible primary partiton and the new logical partition will be E: If the partition on the slave is hidden or the drive is removed then the new logical partition will become D: If the slave contains logical partitions they will all follow the logical partitions on the master and not shunt the drive letters on the master around. In WinXP it doesnt matter since you can change these other drive letters to how you want them to appear.

When you are ready to delete the slave partition just ensure that you create logical partitions in its place - and just so you know its normal that when you do this there will always be a very small unallocated space at the start of the drive.

I am finally beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel and have only a few more minor questions before I get to work. You said:

"Run PM and first resize the hidden Win98 partition down to say 2GB (2,000MB). Highlight the relevant partition, choose resize and follow the wizard. Then highlight the unallocated space liberated and choose create. I suggest you use just half of it to create one logical partition in FAT32 format. Just leave the remaining unallocated space for now; you can always later enlarge a partition or create a new one in it as required; it gives you a bit of slack for the future."

First about resizing the hidden Win98 partition.:

There is currently 903 MB space used on the Win98 partition.
Contained in that 903MB is the Win98 OS, Partition Magic, the Scanner, the Printer (which also works on XP). When I resize it to 2GB will all of what is now on it remain there?

Then about creating one logical partition in FAT32 format, using just half of the liberated space. By my calculations, the partition now contains 15GB. Subtracting 2GB=13GB. Dividing 13GB in half leaves 6.5GB for the logical partition I will create, with the other 6.5GB left unallocated for future use.

You suggested: "Later, when booted into Win98, save your relevant data onto the new logical partition you have just created."

Since there is now more than 8GB on the nearly full Slave from which I will be copying the data to this newly created logical partition, I would think that I should create at least an 8 or 9 GB partition to accommodate this data.

When I copy my old data into this new logical partition formatted as FAT32, will everything automatically line up into the same type of structure as what I see now when I click on Explore when I open G:?

Perhaps it would be better if I first went thru all the data before I copied it into the new partition so I could eliminate what I no longer need before bothering to copy it.

Also when I copy it, do I just highlight everything left in Explore and let it copy at its own pace, or should I copy it Folder by Folder?

Or, as I was once advised, when copying data from one Profile to Another in Win98, the best way was to highlight all the individual files before pressing Copy, rather than highlighting only all the folders before copying. I don't know whether that was specific to that situation or if it always applies.

Finally, two last things I would like to clarify: You wrote:

"Click Apply and let PM make the changes, rebooting if prompted."

What I am not able to visualize is what I will see when I reboot into Win98. Where will I see the Slave Drive in order to copy the data from it to the newly created logical partition?
And, last, at which point do I no longer need the Slave in its present state so I can finally clean it up and get it ready to be used for backup?

After clarifying these last few points, I ask for your further indulgence, to outline step by step the order of the sequence I will be following.
I am, as always, much obliged for your patience.

When I resize it to 2GB will all of what is now on it remain there? Yes - as long as you are not trying to put "twenty gallons into a ten gallon tank". You are not doing so thus 2GB should be fine. PM will just reorganise the files and clusters on the partition and since they will mostly be at the start of the large partition that organisation shouldnt take too long.

I would think that I should create at least an 8 or 9 GB partition to accommodate this data. That's fine - you can use all of the remaining space if you want to in one larger logical partition - it's just not mandatory to always use up all of ones disk space.

will everything automatically line up into the same type of structure as what I see now when I click on Explore Yes. The file structure as seen by us humans will be the same even if what goes on "behind the scenes" is different. It would even look the same if you converted a format from fat to ntfs or vice versa.

Also when I copy it, do I just highlight everything left in Explore and let it copy at its own pace, or should I copy it Folder by Folder It doesn't really matter - both would do the trick. My own favorite way is to open two windows of My Computer at the same time and then Right Drag the highlighted files/folders from one window to the destination. The reason is you then get a confirmation dialog and can choose to copy or to move or to cancel at that point. Once the copying or moving starts it is best to let it finish. There are, as you say, more ways than one of moving stuff around - so whatever you are happiest and most comfortable with.

Where will I see the Slave Drive in order to copy the data from it to the newly created logical partition After rebooting and having created a new logical partition on the master (a) the slave drive and (b) the windows 98 partition and (c) the new logical partition should all be visible to Win98. Win98 on C, Slave on D, and New Logical on E. Once the slave drive is changed from primary to logical you would have Win98 on C, New Logical on D, and Slave on E. Thats just the way that Win9X does it - dynamically and following certain rules at every new boot.

to outline step by step the order of the sequence I will be following

Backup important data on removable media.
Resize Win98 partition to 2GB.
Create New Logical FAT partition in unallocated space (size of your own choosing).
Copy data from Slave.
Delete primary partition on Slave.
Create logical partition(s) on Slave.


BTW - do you have a CD burner and if so what software are you using? (This is unrelated to the above but could help to provide you with simple startup boot CDs in the absence of a floppy drive.)

Thanks, everything is now crystal clear. What will take the most time is deciding what to copy and what to delete, before actually doing the resizing.
Yes, I have a DVD/CD+RW in Drive D which uses Sonic Record Now as the software and a CD ROM in Drive E.

I would appreciate any suggestions you have about how to go about using them to provide me with simple startup boot CDs in the absence of a floppy drive.

It would seem that Sonic Record Now can be configured to create bootable disks (http://sonic.com/products/recordnow/deluxe/default.asp) so it should just be a matter of finding the correct instructions/clicks of the mouse.

Burning such CD's involves two basic processes combined into one procedure; the first is to "emulate" either a bootable floppy or a bootable HDD partition; the second is to include the files that you want to be accessed/used after booting to the "CD" which is "pretending" to be a floppy disk. We are only interested in floppy emulation here. Thus there can only be up to 1.44MB on the emulated floppy but anything up to about 600MB for the additional files.

The simplest setup for you would be to use a floppy image of a Win98 startup diskette from BootDisk.com DOS Based Image Files: Win98SE (http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm) or Use this DIRECT LINK (http://1gighost.net/dosfile/win98sc.zip) (since you cant copy these files directly from a floppy diskette) for the floppy part and also since this will contain the CDROM drivers necessary to access that part of the very same CD that is behaving like a CD and not like a floppy. Having instructed the burning software to use the floppy image for the floppy emulation you would then, say, include all of the relevant DOS files from Partition Magic's DOS folder. Just drag the whole of that DOS folder into the correct window of the burning software.

Having chosen to create a bootable CD, you then just burn (to an empty CDRW for starters). If all goes to plan and if your boot sequence in the BIOS setup is CD before HDD, then when you boot-up with this CD in place, it should look just as if you are loading a Win98 startup diskette. You would select to choose #2 "With CDROM Support" and note which drive is designated as the CD drive. You should find your PM DOS folder on that drive (or possibly the one after it if you have two ATAPI devices) and then access its DOS folder and then just enter pqmagic at the command prompt to load and run PM under DOS.

This gives one all sorts of control and versatility should things go astray and lose normal access to your system. You wont see the "floppy part" by accessing the CD normally - only by accessing the A: prompt after booting to the CD. The actual physical floppy drive itself can still be accessed but it's drive letter will have been changed to B:

It's not that hard to set up a simple program like this; you should, I think, leave aside creating multiple menus that run multiple applications and so on - at least for the time being. LOL :D

PS After unzipping floppy images they can have a number of different file extensions, img, ima, vfd, etc. It can be changed to whatever the software you are using prefers since the image is the same whatever.

Yes, I found the program in my version of Sonic, and will be spending the next few evenings performing all the chores which you have so precisely outlined for me. It is so thoughtful of you to think of things, which would never have occurred to me, but which will be very helpful when the time comes that I need them.