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No access to the second disk in MS-DOS mode (Win98)

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First post, by CJ Grass

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Hello,
I'm having a weird problem accessing Disk D in DOS mode under Windows 98SE.
I will describe briefly what and how.
My hardware is a P3 450 on an ABIT BE6 board, 256MB Ram, VooDoo3 3000, SB Live! and two 80GB drives (the main drive with the system is a Hitachi 82GB HDS728080PLAT20 and the other is a WD 80GB WD800BB-00JKA0).
The drives are 100% functional (checked with Sentinel and HDTune) both in FAT32 with one partition and both connected under the ATA66 controller which is on the ABIT HPT366 board. Everything works OK. But recently I created myself a shortcut to the MS-DOS tib and under it I have a problem with SOME files (although with most files). When I try to run, to preview e.g. with a text editor or F3/F4 in Norton Commander, I get the error "Error on drive D, Sector not found."
There are files (but they are exceptions) that boot or if it is a text file I can preview them.
I switched drives under DMA33 controller but same thing. I botted a drive from FDD leaving only one drive - same thing. Unknown sector errors all the time.
When trying to copy, for example, autoexec.bat from drive C to drive D (Toshiba to WD), the message "There isn't enough room to copy autoexec.bat to d:autoexec.bat" appears.
Under Windows 98, all files are readable.
As far as I know, the DOS that comes with Win98 is v7.1 and supports disks up to 126GB which would agree because the 82GB C drive is properly readable.
After typing the ver command in MS-DOS mode under windows 98, the message Widows 98 Ver 4.10.2222 appeared.
Do you have any suggestions, ideas why I can't access the second drive (D) in MS-DOS mode under Win98?
Thank you very much.

Reply 1 of 5, by Jo22

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Hi, not sure if this is an explanation to your issue, but generally speaking, DOS uses BIOS routines while Windows 9x uses a *.VXD HDD driver to access the hard drive.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 2 of 5, by CJ Grass

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Yesterday I accepted your explanation and it was acceptable 😀 but today an interesting thing happened!
On completely different hardware (Compaq Evo N400c laptop) playing C&C on battery under Windows 98, I ran out of power 😀 and the laptop switched off. After booting up the games partition (E) was giving errors (I was reminded how sensitive systems used to be to sudden power failure!) it got so bad that I had to format it (FAT32).
I copied my game collection again from other hardware and under win everything works ok (C&C win95ed and other games).
However, under MS DOS mode the same errors started again (Error on drive D, Sector not found) which I had on completely different hardware.
Surprisingly yesterday when in MS-DOS mode they worked normally!!! everything crashed after formatting the E partition (20GB disk divided into 3 partitions, 2x2GB FAT16 and the remaining ~15.3GB FAT32) and again only with this FAT32 partition I have problems in MS-DOS mode of Windows 98.
WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Reply 3 of 5, by chinny22

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Which tool are are you partitioning hard drives with? fdisk, Partition Magic, etc?

I have best luck with very similar setups with spinning rust plugged into the onboard controller and letting fdisk create the partitions.
Your already doing the first 2 so can only guess it's the last one.

You will need the updated fdisk (KB263044) though as the drive is over 64GB
https://archive.org/details/windows-98-and-se … drive-fixes.-7z

Reply 4 of 5, by CJ Grass

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Thx for reply.
My drive is 20GB so I don't think a fix for fdisk is necessary. I partitioned the first two partitions (2x 2GB FAT) under dos (fdisk), and I created the FAT32 patry (15GB) by connecting the drive to another computer using AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Edit:
I know that DOS does best with partitions up to 2GB (6.22) although I didn't want that I divided the drive into an additional 3 fat16 partitions (3x2GB) plus the rest Fat32. Now I have 5 partitions of 2GB each FAT16 and the rest in ~9GB FAT32 for Windows games.
Of course, now the MS-DOS mode does not scream regarding the undiscovered sector.
Although it still puzzles me why with the 15GB partition Fat32 DOS which is built into Win98 had problems.
AOMEI's fault?

Reply 5 of 5, by douglar

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Is it possible that the protected mode driver loaded by windows was using an addressing scheme or a chs geometry that your motherboard bios couldn’t understand?

So once you booted into windows, everything looked fine, but when you booted DOS, the int 13h BIOS call could not access everything.

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