Hi! What computer do you have? 🙂

It's an old PC Clone. Got it off eBay, replaced the HDD with a 6GB. Asus Mainboard... ASUS VX97 (Released 1997), P1 200 (MMX)

I thought it might have been the drive, so I swapped it with a 20GB Quantum Fireball LM... and it's doing the same thing. So the HDD isn't an issue.

Thanks. Found the manual, I think..

https://www.manualsdir.com/manuals/40112/asus … 97.html?page=34

Is the HDD setting set to LBA already ?

I'm asking, because it seems to me that DOS 7 and Win95 see different HDD settings maybe.

That can happen if DOS 7 asks the BIOS about drive geometry, but Win 9x asks the HDD directly (through its HDD driver; simply said).
If both then return different specs, things go wild.

Another explanation is that the partition information was somehow mixed up.
Maybe that's because FDISK got confused somehow.

If so, as a workaround, you could try using FDISK from Win98SE maybe. Or just use a Win98SE boot disk.

These are just some ideas, however.

Thnx, I appreciate the feedback.

To answer, yes in LBA mode. When I boot to a Win95 Boot disk, I can FDISK and all looks fine. only one partition shows. Back in the day you would Crete multiple portions, due to FAT16... but this is FAT32, confirmed with FDISK.

I slaved the drive into my Win98SE rig, and it only sees the drive as a single drive. I used this rig to copy the Win95OSR 2.5 Install files.

I'll admit the install went very smooth, no issues.
The official ASUS site does not have drivers to install.

In Safe Mode It sees the drive as expected, the only thing is.. Windows see two drives when there is physically only one drive.
I'd attach a pix or two, but my iPhone takes photos to large to put in this post... I'll have to try to adjust my settings so the image is lower quality to attach.

Two drives

Properties…

Both drive properties are identical. So I only took a pic of the actual C-Drive.

I'll add, this is first boot from install... The moment I open up "My Computer" the system freezes, I hit the restart switch on the case, go into Safe Mode. Once in Safe Mode I can open up "My Computer".
The default (Win95) drivers for CDROM, Sandblaster are installed. and working. Just need video and NIC drivers to install, plus any other items such as DirectX.

But because the system freeze I cannot install anything... yet.

I experienced a similar problem with floppy drive: I got 2 floppy drives (A and B), none accessible. It turned of that the floppy cable was inserted backwards.
Try to reinsert the cable and pay attention to the right direction.

Check what the device manager shows you both about drives and about IDE controllers/channels. You may have something duplicated on that level.

I would try a different IDE cable .
Also, make sure the drive is jumpered for "Master" or "Single" (some drives have a specific setting for use when connected without a slave drive present).

Thanx for the tips…

Ribbon cable is good… if it was installed wrong the bios wouldn’t see it. Do I know it’s good; however I’ll swap it out and see if it makes a difference. It’s a single drive, no other devices attached and it’s set on master not cable select.

Looking at device manager in both normal and safe mode only shows one drive and one drive controller.

On the note of floppy cable, I only have a 3.5” installed… I did install it reversed and bios picked it up at boot. So I fixed for pin one and it is working…

Side note, CD-ROM is on secondary IDE… I’m going to remove it totally as well, see what happens

Here’s an update:
I disconnected the CD-ROM from secondary IDE and the drive duplication went away. I haven’t done anything since that moment, as I’m now travelling for work. Will look into it more when I return.

Closure on this topic...

The fix was updating the Mainboard BIOS. That was it. It fixed the drive duplication. All went smooth after that.

Cheers, eh?