asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-22, 03:01:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-21, 22:56:

Hmm. Odd. I followed the steps exactly, and the old ROM was removed, but when I installed the new one, it says 50+% but doesn't say if it's done. I was allowed to type in a follow-up command. And then rebooting, the HPT screen still shows 1.25.

You need to write the modified BIOS to your board with Awdflash after you're done with Cbrom.

Okay, just re-flashed the BIOS with the modified version and it's all done. Now on 1.28. It also recognises the drive with the right capacity in the HPT BIOS screen. 😁 Thanks for the help.

However... heh.

I have a couple of follow-up issues. Though the BIOS screen shows the HDD, it fails to show it in Windows. I can't remember what I installed last time, so I may have to play around with some of the tools I've downloaded. Also, one thing I still haven't managed to figure out is why Windows is seeing my D drive twice.

And yet FDISK sees the right number of drives:

I tried loading up SeaGate Tools for DOS, as I used that before when the E drive had the wrong capacity. Like the last time I tried to load it up though, I'm greeted with an error and I can't figure out how to solve it.

I tried enabling/disabling various memory commands in config.sys, but nothing seems to work. I swear last time it just... worked on one occasion.

Progress! Of sorts. I don't know why, but I decided to try installing some of the drivers I'd tried before, which are meant to be for the Audigy 2, and this time they installed fully without the system freezing, and everything appears to be there. The device is recognised in the Device Manager, all the volume controls/managers recognise it in the drop-down list, it's listed in Multimedia, in DxDiag, it's using the WDM drivers, and yet... no sound. 🙁 I've tried plugging my speakers into every port on the sound card, but there's no sound or music. Very weird.

Cracked it! Thanks to this thread - SOLVED No sound coming from SB Audigy 2 - it's because digital output was ticked when it should be analog. 😁

So I've finally found drivers that work, are WDM, and I get sound! \o/ Thanks for everyone's help/suggestions with this. Much appreciated. Learnt tonnes as well.

Now I just need to figure out these discrepancies with SeaGate Tools for DOS, the duplicated hard drive, and getting the E drive to appear... ^^;

Glad to hear that, and nice work figuring out the problem!

What I noticed is that your FDISK output says that partition D: is bigger than the physical size of the hard disk. Possible corruption? How big is drive D physically? Is it hooked up to the first IDE controller? It might not properly support drives above 40GB. What happens when you run Scandisk on drive D?

About the missing E drive: You should re-partition and format it now that it's being detected correctly. Can Windows see the physical drive in device manager? It won't assign a drive letter if it can't detect a valid file system.

About the duplicate drives, you also have two CD drives, are these also duplicate? Go into the device manager and see what you have under hard disk controllers.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-23, 19:57:

Glad to hear that, and nice work figuring out the problem! […]
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Glad to hear that, and nice work figuring out the problem!

What I noticed is that your FDISK output says that partition D: is bigger than the physical size of the hard disk. Possible corruption? How big is drive D physically? Is it hooked up to the first IDE controller? It might not properly support drives above 40GB. What happens when you run Scandisk on drive D?

About the missing E drive: You should re-partition and format it now that it's being detected correctly. Can Windows see the physical drive in device manager? It won't assign a drive letter if it can't detect a valid file system.

About the duplicate drives, you also have two CD drives, are these also duplicate? Go into the device manager and see what you have under hard disk controllers.

Thanks. The D drive is about 40GB. That's for games. The E drive is 80GB, which is for CD images. Both C and D are hooked to IDE 1. The CD drive to IDE 2 and the E drive to IDE 3. They all recognise the correct capacity. At the moment, ScanDisk won't run on D. It complains about a lack of memory. I'm guessing it's because I have image backups of the C drive on there. Once the E drive is back to normal, I'll transfer them there.

I did try creating an image backup of E, but it's far too big and was taking forever. After booting back into Windows, the D drive appears to have corrected itself and no longer shows two, which is great. 😁 The E drive is also showing. I did create a DOS partition via FDISK earlier, so I figure that's sorted it out. I just want to see if I can rescue the images on there first before formatting it.

For HDD controllers, the Device Manager lists 4 disk drives - Generic IDE Disk Type 47 twice and two Generic NEC floppy disks. For hard drives it lists Intel 82371AB /EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller, Primary IDE controller (dual fifo), Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo), and the Yamaha OPL3-SAx IDE. There's also two unknown PCI Mass Storage Controllers I can't seem to figure out what or where the drivers are for it. The two CD drives are because I have a physical one and a virtual one from Alcohol 120%. 😀

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-23, 23:24:

After booting back into Windows, the D drive appears to have corrected itself and no longer shows two, which is great. 😁

Still concerning, and pointing to some corruption going on, considering the randomness of it all. Have you tried replacing the BIOS battery yet?

What happens when you go into the device manager and open the properties of the two drives connected to the Intel controller, can you enable DMA for them?

Also, why do you have two floppy drives, is that how you configured it in the BIOS?

There's also two unknown PCI Mass Storage Controllers I can't seem to figure out what or where the drivers are for it.

You probably don't have the HPT drivers for Windows installed. Tried the v1.26 one from the website you posted earlier? https://soggi.org/drivers/drivers.htm

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-24, 12:18:

Still concerning, and pointing to some corruption going on, considering the randomness of it all. Have you tried replacing the B […]
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DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-23, 23:24:

After booting back into Windows, the D drive appears to have corrected itself and no longer shows two, which is great. 😁

Still concerning, and pointing to some corruption going on, considering the randomness of it all. Have you tried replacing the BIOS battery yet? Why do you have two floppy drives, is that how you configured it in the BIOS?

There's also two unknown PCI Mass Storage Controllers I can't seem to figure out what or where the drivers are for it.

You probably don't have the HPT drivers for Windows installed. Tried the v1.26 one from the website you posted earlier? https://soggi.org/drivers/drivers.htm

I've ordered myself one of those IDE to USB adapters, which should be arriving tonight. Providing my main PC doesn't ask me to reformat them straight away, I'm hoping I can backup what's on them, reformat the pair of them, and then transfer the stuff back. And no, changing the BIOS battery is one thing I haven't done yet. I bought a pack the other day, so I can look at doing that. And yeah, the 2 floppy drives I configured in the BIOS. A can't be used until I've got myself another physical floppy drive, but it seems I need both enabled in order for it to see the Gotek floppy drive properly. Otherwise it still comes up as a 5 1/4 drive.

I did wonder if there were some Windows drivers for them I'd installed last time. But since updating to 1.28 in DOS, I wasn't sure if it was wise putting the one on that I have. I think I put 1.25 on previously.

Okay, so the reason the second D drive disappeared was because of setting LASTDRIVE in config.sys whilst I was trying to fix another problem. It's very much there though. So until I can potentially backup the contents, I can't really reformat it yet. I've put another coin battery in the motherboard.

Also, when I try to install the HPT366 driver in Windows it asks for a HPT366.cat file from the driver disc, which I don't have.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-24, 16:26:

Okay, so the reason the second D drive disappeared was because of setting LASTDRIVE in config.sys whilst I was trying to fix another problem. It's very much there though. So until I can potentially backup the contents, I can't really reformat it yet. I've put another coin battery in the motherboard.

Also, when I try to install the HPT366 driver in Windows it asks for a HPT366.cat file from the driver disc, which I don't have.

You can just click "skip" when it asks for the .cat file. It's not needed for the driver to work. It would be interesting to see the voltage of the old battery to see if it caused any of the problems (should be 3V).

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-24, 18:01:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-24, 16:26:

Okay, so the reason the second D drive disappeared was because of setting LASTDRIVE in config.sys whilst I was trying to fix another problem. It's very much there though. So until I can potentially backup the contents, I can't really reformat it yet. I've put another coin battery in the motherboard.

Also, when I try to install the HPT366 driver in Windows it asks for a HPT366.cat file from the driver disc, which I don't have.

You can just click "skip" when it asks for the .cat file. It's not needed for the driver to work. It would be interesting to see the voltage of the old battery to see if it caused any of the problems (should be 3V).

Yeah, I did do. I have got the 1.25 version which uses an extractor and that has the other files, including the CAT file. I tried making use of that, but I'm not 100% sure what version is installed. I'll have to see if Everest tells me. Both devices/drivers are on anyway. 😀

And the battery I took out is 3V.

My IDE to USB adapter is here so I'm going to see if I can salvage the contents of these HDDs.

Yeah, as I feared and suspected - it wants to format both of them. Counterproductive if the sole purpose of this adapter is to rescue data from a hard drive. 🙁

Yeah, so it's not looking likely I can rescue the contents of HDD D and E. 🙁 I tried creating an image from drive E using Recuva, but I'm not able to access/load anything. I tried adding it as a VHD in the Disk Management afterwards, but I'm not able to explore the contents.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-24, 21:13:

Yeah, so it's not looking likely I can rescue the contents of HDD D and E. 🙁 I tried creating an image from drive E using Recuva, but I'm not able to access/load anything. I tried adding it as a VHD in the Disk Management afterwards, but I'm not able to explore the contents.

Then the partition table could be corrupted - remember the FDISK output from above where the partition was bigger than the actual disk size. When you open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) on your newer PC, does it show any partitions on the drive or just a chunk of unallocated space? Be very careful to not re-initialize the disks on the modern PC to avoid data loss - if asked, then cancel. My suggestion would be to leave it in the old PC and connect a correctly formatted, empty hard drive where you can backup the files to, or backup it over ethernet if that's available.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-10-25, 11:47:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-10-24, 21:13:

Yeah, so it's not looking likely I can rescue the contents of HDD D and E. 🙁 I tried creating an image from drive E using Recuva, but I'm not able to access/load anything. I tried adding it as a VHD in the Disk Management afterwards, but I'm not able to explore the contents.

Then the partition table could be corrupted - remember the FDISK output from above where the partition was bigger than the actual disk size. When you open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) on your newer PC, does it show any partitions on the drive or just a chunk of unallocated space? Be very careful to not re-initialize the disks on the modern PC to avoid data loss - if asked, then cancel. My suggestion would be to leave it in the old PC and connect a correctly formatted, empty hard drive where you can backup the files to, or backup it over ethernet if that's available.

I’ve not had it try to reinitialise, no. It just asks me to format the drive. It appears as RAW in the Disk Manager. Unallocated space.

I did try a couple of disk rescue tools, and was about to give up, until I read of one on Reddit. The name escapes me now. Unlike the others, that scans the drive and puts all the content into folders so things are clearer and structured. The others just dumped a load of random unrecognisable files into folders that made no sense. So hopefully, fingers crossed, I can back them up, reformat the drives under 98, and then hook them to my adapter and put them back. 🤞🏻

EDIT: iCare Format is what it's called.

That tool and adapter have done a bang-up job of recovering the data I wanted to retrieve. 😁 It even recovered images I'd made that disappeared when the E drive was playing up and I had to reformat it several times.

Going to put each drive in, one at a time, and reformat, and then see if I can add everything back.