partitions not accessible

[viju]

I had win98 on C drive and winxp on D extended drive.I installed Redhat linux9 on free space on D drive.All the 3 OS were working fine.To increase the space for linux I removed Winxp and inatalled Linux on the full space available on D drive.After some days I wanted to have win partition on D drive to store data.So I removed Linux and partitioned D drive as extended logical partition.
But this 'D' patrition is not accessible(not visible)from win98 and it shows CDrom drive as D drive.I want to restore original configuration.Please help.I used Reuel's partition magic,F disk and Bootitng utilities but of no use.

[Erik]

What file system did you format the extended drive D:\ with? You did remember to format it, right? And for Windows 98 to recognize it it will need to be in FAT 32 or FAT 16.

[Paul Komski]

I installed Redhat linux9 on free space on D drive
Do you mean free space AFTER the D drive - but either inside or outside the extended partition.

It's also not totally clear (to me anyways) whether by D drive you mean a second partition on one HDD or on a second HDD altogether.

Also, if you are booting up with a boot manager such as bootitng, is it configured to hide any partitions?

You could get all the available partition information by using Paritition Info Win9x (ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PartIn9x.zip) or Partition Info DOS (ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/partinfo.zip) and post the results back here.

[viju]

Erik,
I tried Fat16&Fat32 but of no use.
Paul I got error message from partition info win9x.D drive means second partition one 1HDD.
Output from partition info Dos is given below

Partition Information Program
Sep 16 2002 - DOS32 Version
Copyright (c) 1994-2002, PowerQuest Corporation
Permission is granted for this utility to be freely copied so long
as it is not modified in any way. All other rights are reserved.

PowerQuest, makers of PartitionMagic(r), Drive Image(tm) and DriveCopy(tm), can
be reached at
Voice: 801-226-6834 Web site: http://www.powerquest.com/support/
Fax: 801-226-8941 Email: help@powerquest.com


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: 10008432 (0x98B770)
15. Big Sectors Per FAT: 9765
16. Extended Flags: 0x0000
17. FS Version: 0
18. First Cluster of Root: 2 (0x2)
19. FS Info Sector: 1
20. Backup Boot Sector: 6
21. Reserved: 0x00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
22. Drive ID: 0x80
23. Reserved for NT: 0x00
24. Extended Boot Sig: 0x29
25. Serial Number: 0x171E1302
26. Volume Name: NO NAME
27. File System Type: FAT32
28. Boot Signature: 0xAA55
I hope this would help.

[Paul Komski]

For some reason that is only part of the text. Try running the app and then use the save as button to save a text file somewhere, then upload that file here or copy and paste all of it in another post. If the same text shows again you could try Partition Edit for Windows (ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PtEdit32.zip) or Partition Edit for DOS (ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PtEdit.zip) and just report the values that it displays for the Partition Tables of the HDD.

[viju]

PowerQuest PartitionInfo 8.0 -- Windows 95/98/Me Version
Date Generated: 01/08/05 07:04:07
Copyright (c)1994-2002, PowerQuest Corporation
Permission is granted for this utility to be freely copied so long
as it is not modified in any way. All other rights are reserved.

PowerQuest, makers of PartitionMagic(r), Drive Image(tm), and DriveCopy(tm), can be reached at:
Voice: 801-437-8900
Fax: 801-226-8941
Web site: http://www.powerquest.com/support/
E-mail: magic@powerquest.com

General System Information:
Total Physical Memory (bytes): 199,647,232
Used Physical Memory: (bytes): 183,943,168
Maximum Page File Size: (bytes): 262,635,520
Current Page File Size: (bytes): 91,115,520



================================================== ================================================== =======
Disk Geometry Information for Disk 1: 1245 Cylinders, 255 Heads, 63 Sectors/Track
System PartSect # Boot BCyl Head Sect FS ECyl Head Sect StartSect NumSects
================================================== ================================================== =======
NO NAME 0 0 80 0 1 1 0B 622 254 63 63 10,008,432
0 1 00 623 0 1 15 1023 254 63 10,008,495 9,976,365
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Actual values are:
0 1 00 623 0 1 15 1243 254 63 10008495 9976365



================================================== ================================================== =======
Partition Information for Disk 1: 9,766.1 Megabytes
Volume PartType Status Size MB PartSect # StartSect TotalSects
================================================== ================================================== =======
C:NO NAME FAT32 Pri,Boot 4,886.9 0 0 63 10,008,432
Type 15 Pri 4,871.3 0 1 10,008,495 9,976,365
Unallocated Pri 7.8 None -- 19,984,860 16,065


================================================== ================================================== =======
Boot Record for drive C: (Drive: 1, Starting sector: 63, Type: FAT32)
================================================== ================================================== =======
1. Jump: EB 58 90
2. OEM Name: MSWIN4.1
3. Bytes per Sector: 512
4. Sectors per Cluster: 8
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: 10008432 (0x98B770)
15. Big Sectors per FAT: 9765
16. Extended Flags: 0x0000
17. FS Version: 0
18. First Cluster of Root: 2 (0x2)
19. FS Info Sector: 1
20. Backup Boot Sector: 6
21. Reserved: 000000000000000000000000
22. Drive ID: 0x80
23. Reserved for NT: 0x00
24. Extended Boot Sig: 0x29
25. Serial Number: 0x171E1302
26. Volume Name: NO NAME
27. File System Type: FAT32
28. Boot Signature: 0xAA55

[viju]

Dear komsky,
I had to down load some vxd file to open partinfo win9x programe.I have attached partinfo2.txt file.
Thanks.

[Paul Komski]

For some reason the extended partition has been hidden. This is atypical and is probably the reason that all the apps are being thrown out of skew. Also, as long as it is hidden, no logical drives inside it can be "reached".

Download the Partition Edit for Windows from the above link, unzip it and run it from within Windows (or do the same thing with the dos version from a boot floppy). Put the cursor into the first column (Type) of the row 2. It should be showing the value 15. Edit this to 05 by directly editing it or by selecting the Set Type button and setting it to extended partition from in there.

Reboot and see if the second partition is now recognised by Windows and Partition Magic. If so we can take it on from there if you are still unsure of how to proceed.

My guess is that you used BootIt-NG to inadvertently hide the extended partition because it is the only utility that I have used (apart from direclty editing the partition tables with PtEdit32 or similar).

[viju]

Dear Paul,
I edited value in 1st column and 2nd row to 05 and saved the changes.But after rebooting value in partition edit was restored to 15 and parttion was not recognised by windows but partition magic recognises extended partition. I am giving below output from fdisk.

Display Partition Information

Current fixed disk drive: 1

Partition Status Type Volume Label Mbytes System Usage
C: 1 A PRI DOS 4887 FAT32 50%
2 EXT DOS 4879 50%



Total disk space is 9766 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes)


The Extended DOS Partition contains Logical DOS Drives.
Do you want to display the logical drive information (Y/N)......?[Y]




Display Logical DOS Drive Information

Drv Volume Label Mbytes System Usage
D: * Remote * 3146 FAT32 100%












Total Extended DOS Partition size is 4879 Mbytes (1 MByte = 1048576 bytes)

[Paul Komski]

Are you sure that you uninstalled all traces of BootIt-NG since that's the only thing I can think of that is resetting the value from 05 to 15. I would:-
a) first run fdisk /mbr from a boot floppy (to remove any residual overlay from the mbr)
b) then reset the extended value to 05 with pdedit - save the changes and check that they stick
c) only then use PM to delete the logical partition in the extended partition and then the extended partition itself.
d) then use PM to create a new logical partition in the unallaocated space.

Interested to see how you get on.

[viju]

Do you mean I should uninstall Bootit ng?Then I will not be able to boot PC.Which boot floopy you are referring to?I have only win98 Boot floppy.

[Paul Komski]

I didn't realise you were still using BING for booting purposes since most people don't bother with a boot manager when only using a single OS (and since you have removed winXP and linux). You could boot to the BING floppy or CD and either uninstall or inactivate it (at least temporarily) and you might be able to do this directly from the maintenance area. BING is very easy to put back in place if you want to. Your Win98 system should then boot up OK since it is on the active partition and hopefully the 05 value should now "stick".

If you continue to use BING then look carefully at the hide button and unhide all entries (at least for the time being). After the extended partition is unhidden you could also go into the separate area of hiding options from vol (= extended partition) to hide/unhide any logical partitions. The BING settings will be applied every time you reboot and that is why it now sounds like the "culprit".

[viju]

Dear Paul,
Thanks for your advice.As suggested by you,I got rid of BING and the extended partition was visible.The reason I using BING is when I had Windows and Linux I was using GRUB in Dirve C for booting,but when I got rid of Linux, GRUB stopped booting windows.So I installed Bing.Again when I got rid of BING, PC was not booting and was looking for GRUB.So reinstalled win98 without formatting to correct boot sector.Is there any way when one gets rid of Linux GRUB and still manages to boot windows without reinstall?

[pave_spectre]

Normal procedure would be to uninstall the bootloader before removing Linux.

Otherwise you can use a win98 boot floppy and run the command fdisk /mbr.

[Paul Komski]

To recap - afaik anyway:
(a) You had a dual boot system with Win98 and WinXP. That system would have been using a WinXP boot sector and boot.ini file to dual boot; (normal mbr with no boot manager and just booting to the active partition - presumably C).
(b) You next installed Linux and triple-booted; (mbr overaid with grub boot manager).
(c) You next removed the WinXP partition and reinstalled Linux; (mbr still overlaid with grub boot manager and WinXP boot partition still on C drive).
(d) You next deleted Linux and created a data partition; (grub not removed so mbr still overlaid) - (grub could have been removed at this point and the active partition should have then booted win98 up normally from the dual boot menu still in existence on C).
(e) Instead of removing grub, bootitng was installed; (bing now overlaid grub which had been overlaying the mbr)
(f) Extended partition not visible because bing had been configured to hide the extended partition at every bootup using bing.
(g) Quote "Again when I got rid of BING, PC was not booting and was looking for GRUB". This is because bing kindly replaced the boot record it had originally taken the place of. This is when fdisk /mbr should have corrected things again but instead you installed Win98 over the old installation. This is not a good move in multiboot scenarios and particularly if any partitions have changed since windows 98 was originally installed since the new boot sector which gets written may not now match the references in the original system files and fail to boot even though it has a new valid windows98 boot sector as such.

Sorry the text in red is a bit topsy turvy. The problem that can arise is that you may no longer be able to boot Win9x from a dual boot after resizing. That can occur because bootsect.dos is not updated in parallel. In that situation you need to first recreate a new win98 boot sector, then replace bootsect.dos with the new boot sector and finally recreate a winxp boot sector. Got my knickers in a bit of twist there.

If the system will not boot after running fdisk /mbr from a boot floppy and you have a correctly configured active partition for the Win98 primary partition, then you will either have to reinstall windows from scratch or attempt to replace the very original Win98 boot sector, which WinXP would have used to create the bootsect.dos file in the C drive and which the WinXP dual boot processes would have used to boot windows 98 at that point in time.

[viju]

Hi friends,
Sorry,I forgot to mention that after reinstall of win98,my pc started booting to win 98.Now I have 'C' drive having win98,extended partition having 'D' drive to store data.Now again I have installed Mandrake 10 official in empty space.Now my PC boots through Grub which offers options of booting to Linux or Windows.
Thanks for all the help exteded.