Captain! help...i cannot FORMAT!!

[fideleus]

i am trying to format my drive, but when i boot up using the startup disk i created (controlpanel/addremoveprograms/startupdisk) it creates a RAMdrive D:, and if i tell it that i want cdrom support, it loads the cdrom drivers, then does a bunch of other stuff which includes a number of pci bus scans.\
then when i enter the format command (format c http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif, it starts to format and then tells me that there was an internal stack overflow, and suggests that i modify the config.sys file.
should i modify the config.sys? and if i do, which part should i do? what could be the cause of this overflow? why would the config.sys be configured in such a way as to cause an overflow?
also, when i used the startup disk, but told it not to boot with cdrom support, the format also failed; although i think this time it reported that the problem was insufficietn memory.
if anyone can help me with these questions, i would appreciate it. thanks for taking the time. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/cool.gif

[iisbob]

The stacks command is a holdover from old DOS 3 days, it was set to help with memory issues, the one in your startup disk should readstacks=9,256 if it is higher this is where you usually get the internal error commands.

When your startup disk initiates the autoexec & config.sys files it uses command lines to load DOS into the high memory area so that more conventional memory is freed up to handle such tasks as Format/Fdisk etc.
example: dos=high,umb putting DOS into the upper memory blocks to free up more conventional memory ( the true memory a PC has, seperate from the extended memory people are so used to refering too; eg-64mb's, 128mb's etc. )

More than likely i would say you have a bad Himem.sys file on your system, since windows doesn't normally use this file you've not noticed any problems until you started to use it in a DOS enviroment, i would suggest that you see about getting a startup disk from somneone else ZPC and see if that helps you out.

Try the following at the bottom of your config.sys file if it is different; [COMMON]
files=60
buffers=20
dos=high,umb
stacks=9,256
lastdrive=z






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iisbob
"Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It's not fair that some men should be happier than others."
-- Oscar Wilde

[BigBlue66]

Just go to www.bootdisk.com (http://www.bootdisk.com) and download the appropriate one with CD-ROM support for your OS.

Good luck.

BB 66


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Life = Karma, or is it, Karma = Life?

[fideleus]

hey thanks for your time, iisbob and BibBlue66.

i used a startup disk made on another system, but the same problem happened. i also checked what iisbob suggested in the config.sys file, and the only differences were that files=10 and buffers=10 and devicehigh=ramdrive.sys /E 2048. i changed files and buffers to 60 and 20, respectively, so that it looks the same as what you suggested except for the devicehigh line.

right now i just downloaded some stuff from the link BigBlue66 gave me, and i will check back. but id like to still be able to distinguish exactly what is going on.

here is the messages i get after i issue the format command:



checking existing disk format
recording current bad clusters
complete.
verifying 4,118.19M
0% complete.


the line reading 0% complete then changes to:



trying to recover allocation unit 237

an internal stack overflow has caused the session to be halted.
change the STACKS setting in your CONFIG.SYS file, and then try again.
_


and then it hangs.
the stacks setting in the config.sys file is as iisbob says it should be; it reads stacks=9,256

the system configuratio utility in win98 reported that the himem.sys file was not corrupted.
please tell me what else i can do.

thanks for taking the time. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/cool.gif

[iisbob]

Hmm, well it's possible that your still running low on memory, so try this:

Increase the no# of stacks to 18, and the memory to 512 bytes, your stacks= line should look like this stacks=18,512

See if that will help. It's unusal for your PC to need that much memory just running DOS applications like a boot disk. When you boot up, try running MS scandisk ( you can add this to your boot floppy -scandisk.exe), and have it do a thurough surface scan.



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iisbob
"Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It's not fair that some men should be happier than others."
-- Oscar Wilde