Windows 95 problem

[mikebw at bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

Karl M Hergenrother wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 KMH> 1.  I do not believe the BIOS supports large disks.

Can you give us the exact make and model of the BIOS?  Almost all PCI bus
motherboards have LBA support.

 KMH> 2.  My D drive is a Maxtor 1.2 Gig drive and I am using the
 KMH> Maxtor supplied  driver which resides in my MBR (their
 KMH> choice, not mine).  The driver is  called MaxBlast Disk
 KMH> Manager and is supplied by Ontrack Computer Systems.  I 
 KMH> would get rid of it if I knew how.  Disk Manager , however
 KMH> is not loaded  when I boot from a floppy, but I still have
 KMH> the problem.

Ontrack makes "Disk Manager."  What you have is just a private label version of
the exact thing we are talking about.  Actually, I think "MaxBlast" is a bundle
of Ontrack "Disk Manager" (for LBA support) and Ontrack "Drive Rocket" (for SMS
support).

 KMH> 3.  My C drive has a 300 meg DOS partition HDA1 and a 50 meg
 KMH> root partition   HDA2, a 50 meg user partition HDA3 and a 20
 KMH> meg swap partition HDA4.  These  last three partitions are
 KMH> all for LINUX.

Obviously, this small disk has no trouble under anything.

 KMH> 4.  I have installed, sort of, a Quarterdeck memory manager
 KMH> QEMM8, which I  suspect may be at the heart of the problem. 
 KMH> I seem to have a problem with  this product after Windows 95
 KMH> was installed, and this is when the loadlin  problem
 KMH> started.  

QEMM certainly will not help LOADLIN!

 KMH> What I don't understand is why I can not load LINUX when I
 KMH> boot dos from an  old DOS boot floppy and run loadlin.  The
 KMH> system should be in a fairly  pristine condition using this
 KMH> technique.  Everything I need is on the C  drive and the D
 KMH> drive doesn't show.

When you boot from floppy, the MBR code on the hard drive is not run and
therefore cannot patch the BIOS to provide large hard drive support.  Disk
Manager works by using a non-standard partition type code, so raw DOS will not
be able to see it.

Instead, boot from the hard drive and hit F5 or F8 to intercept the boot and
enter raw DOS -- with the MBR patch already loaded.  At this point, you should
be up without QEMM or other complications, and LOADLIN should work.
 
-- Mike