SScorpio wrote on 2022-06-01, 22:22:

After booting off the USB run. fdisk /status --- Figure out which drive number is your CF card […]
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After booting off the USB run.
fdisk /status --- Figure out which drive number is your CF card

Then run
fdisk /mbr # --- Replace # with whatever the number for the CF card is. This should recreate the master boot record on the CF card.

Finally try running
sys d: -- This should then put command.com and other needed DOS files to let it boot on the CF card.

Once that's all down power down, remove the USB drive and see if you can boot off the CF card.

Oh my God, it's so difficult.

I never thought to find a lot of difficulties, and I am not understanding why all these problems came out, you know.

When before I tried to use the fdisk command, I selected the correct drive (the CF) and when I destroyed the DOS primary partition, and tried to recreate it, it stucks on the prompt that say "verifing the integrity"...to 0%.

I shutdown the system and gave up. I leave for a day. I will probably re-try tomorrow morning, but this is SO crazy, can I have this big troubles to simply install a S/O through USB when in ALL OTHER system I have no problems before?

Is it something particular that happens and so I have a lot of problems of "partition non correct on boot"?

I am not understanding more, I really don't know FROM WHERE that problem came.

Anyway I really want to try installing the Windows 2000 SP4 Italian version that I have downloaded.

Tomorrow I will make others tries and I will let you know.

I am really one inch to put all away in the bin.

Thanks anyway for the support.

kiacadp wrote on 2022-06-02, 05:46:

There is another thread on a Gigabyte motherboard with a similar southbridge chip, the VT8235M. I also own a board like that and […]
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There is another thread on a Gigabyte motherboard with a similar southbridge chip, the VT8235M. I also own a board like that and they can be a headache to figure out.
Have a look at the thread, it's got some info on bootable usb's as well. Gigabyte GA-PCV2 and the VIA pc-1 Initiative
Personally, I managed to get windows 98SE installed via CD-Rom and IDE to CF adapter. While this causes headaches for you , as your motherboard doesn't have the ATX connector, I would still try it like that somehow. The other suggestions on how to do it sound plausible.
Perhaps try even with a smaller hard disk if you have one at hand, something like a 6 GB or so. I had trouble partitioning a 32 GB CF card with that motherboard.
Don't loose your cool, figuring this crap out is half the fun 😁

I read that thread but it doesn't help me so much, I didn't find something interesting for my problem;

Anyway the board they are talking about is a quite different, only the Via C3 chipset is the same. I think on my thin cliend I have a video chip too, but I cannot say which one is cause I cannot remove the heatsink from over it.

I have no other ideas that connect a cd-rom drive on the IDE port and supply with an external power supply (difficult thing, I don't really think this is NORMAL if someone want to install a S/O from zero, it's absolutely a mad thing, problably this thin client isn't built for installing a S/O from zero).

Jo22 wrote on 2022-06-02, 20:44:

Hi everyone. Don't despair! […]
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Hi everyone. Don't despair!

Just use an USB Floppy drive and an Windows 98SE boot diskette. 🙂

The diskette is a modified one, of course, not the original (use a copy).
Add FORMAT and SYS to it. And FDISK, if it is not there.

Then just boot from floppy, use FDISK to create a partition.

If finished, reset.

Boot again usibg floppy and do FORMAT C: /B.

If finished, power off. Remove CF.

Use another PC and copy over the important DIRs from Windows CD-ROM.

Reinstall the CF in the vintage PC.

Then boot from floppy again go to C:
and switch into the Windows directory.
Start the setup program. Might be called WINNT or something.
Also add needed /parameters if you wish.

PS: Windows NT cares for the Removable Media Bit.
It may or may not install on a consumer CF, thus.
It's not the card's fault, though. Adding some *.INF file (like with XP) may solve that little annoyance.

Edit: Edited.

Sorry, but I don't have a USB floppy drive and I am not interested to spend money to buy one in a project that started only cause a friend gave this thin client to me as he doesn't use anymore.

biessea wrote on 2022-06-02, 21:18:

Sorry, but I don't have a USB floppy drive and I am not interested to spend money to buy one in a project that started only cause a friend gave this thin client to me as he doesn't use anymore.

No no, I'm the one who's sorry. 🙃

Certain things could be hassle free, if people just would be willing to invest a little bit.
Generally speaking.

From what I've learned in all those years, is, that mainstream methods aren't always best.

The media boldly says that old technology such as floppies and CDs are a relic and
that we're having it sooo much better now. SSDs, USB pen drives, video streams..

In reality, though, an USB thumb drive emulating a floppy isn't necessarily as reliable or compatible as a real floppy drive/floppy disk.
All the modern workarounds may turn out to be more stressful than just dusting off the real thing from the attic.

Anyway, I'm not against new technology at all. I'm just picky.
If that thin client had a floppy connector, a Gotek floppy emulator and an USB thumb drive would be totally fine.

By the way: If you have access to an USB CD-ROM drive,
you could try booting from the Windows 98SE CD.
That may work just as good, well, at least if it can reach the content on the CD-ROM part.
- DOS loads up its own generic CD-ROM drivers for IDE/ATAPI, SCSI..
The 98 CD has all the needed files. Some are on A:\ (the emulated 1,44MB floppy image), some on D:\WIN98 (the ISO9660/Joliet side).

Alternatively, booting of a real IDE CD-ROM is also an alternative.
An USB to IDE/SATA cable with an old optical drive (CD, DVD, Blu Ray) may also work as good as a dedicated USB CD-ROM drive.

Good luck! 🙂👍

Edit: If booting from CD-ROM works, FreeDOS and/or Hiren's Boot CD could be helpful testing the little fellow.
FreeDOS may also be helpful in creating a FAT/FAT32 partition.

Once you created a partition on the VIA system itself, the correct LBA drive geometry are used for that particular system.
After that copying files shouldn't be an issue. Other PCs should just keep using that drive geometry, so these boot sectors errors etc. shouldn't appear anymore.

Edit: Edited.

Edit: There also was that HP USB utility.
It could create a bootable USB stick. It predates Rufus by many years.
Maybe it works for you. Good luck!

https://filehippo.de/download_hp-usb-disk-sto … ge-format-tool/

If all else fails, make an image of your CF card on your main computer, using the utility from https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/

Use that image along with a Win98 bootdisk in qemu, partition it as you wish, don't forget to format /s after rebooting qemu.
Write back the image to your CF card, eject it and try to boot your thinclient with it.

I will soon make some proofs.

Lolo799 I'm not sure that I have understood what you are trying to suggest me.

Please, more step-by-step.

Thanks a lot.

PS: I don't know what is QEMU

I'll try to make it as simple as possible.
I assume you have a modern enough computer running Windows (even XP would do) with enough space to hold a file the size of your CF card (16GB, right?) and a CF card reader.

Put your CF card in the reader, plug it in your computer, get hddrawcopytool from the link in my previous post.

Run it, it will show a window with a list of drives on your computer, select your CF card, click continue double click on "File", select where you want to save your CF card image and give it a name, like myCF.img.
Click save to close the dialog window, then start.
Wait till it it finishes, you'll get a 16GB file.

QEMU is a computer emulator/virtualizer, like VirtualPC/VMware/Bochs/Pcem/86box.

Got to qemu.org and download a 32bit or 64bit version for Windows, depending on your processor, not that it will matter much for what you'll use it for.
Unless you have XP, then you'll need an old version from 2016 or so.
Install it.

Move your myCF.img file to the folder Qemu is installed to.
Get a windows98 bootdisk image from the internet, or a Windows98.iso dumped from your own CD.
Put it/them in the same Qemu folder.

Create a new text file, edit it and write this on a single line:
qemu-system-x86_64 -machine pc -fda win98bootfloppy.img -hda myCF.img -boot a

Save it in the qemu directory as qemuboot.bat for example, note that it should be a .bat or .cmd file, not a straight .txt file.

If you prefer to use a cdrom iso image, write this in the file:
qemu-system-x86_64 -machine pc -hda myCF.img -cdrom windows98.iso -boot d

Run that .bat file, Qemu should start showing a pc bios screen of some sort, then will boot the floppy or cdrom image you chose.
Do the regular fdisk/format procedure.

After that is done and qemu is closed, open your qemuboot.bat file and replace -boot a (or -boot d) with -boot c to start from your myCF.img instead to check it it works fine.

Once that's done and qemu is closed again, run hddrawcopytool, choose myCF.img as the source and your CF card as the target, start the writing.
Eject your CF card, put it in your thinclient, see if it boots.

lolo799 wrote on 2022-06-04, 12:28:

I'll try to make it as simple as possible. I assume you have a modern enough computer running Windows (even XP would do) with en […]
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I'll try to make it as simple as possible.
I assume you have a modern enough computer running Windows (even XP would do) with enough space to hold a file the size of your CF card (16GB, right?) and a CF card reader.

Put your CF card in the reader, plug it in your computer, get hddrawcopytool from the link in my previous post.

Run it, it will show a window with a list of drives on your computer, select your CF card, click continue double click on "File", select where you want to save your CF card image and give it a name, like myCF.img.
Click save to close the dialog window, then start.
Wait till it it finishes, you'll get a 16GB file.

QEMU is a computer emulator/virtualizer, like VirtualPC/VMware/Bochs/Pcem/86box.

Got to qemu.org and download a 32bit or 64bit version for Windows, depending on your processor, not that it will matter much for what you'll use it for.
Unless you have XP, then you'll need an old version from 2016 or so.
Install it.

Move your myCF.img file to the folder Qemu is installed to.
Get a windows98 bootdisk image from the internet, or a Windows98.iso dumped from your own CD.
Put it/them in the same Qemu folder.

Create a new text file, edit it and write this on a single line:
qemu-system-x86_64 -machine pc -fda win98bootfloppy.img -hda myCF.img -boot a

Save it in the qemu directory as qemuboot.bat for example, note that it should be a .bat or .cmd file, not a straight .txt file.

If you prefer to use a cdrom iso image, write this in the file:
qemu-system-x86_64 -machine pc -hda myCF.img -cdrom windows98.iso -boot d

Run that .bat file, Qemu should start showing a pc bios screen of some sort, then will boot the floppy or cdrom image you chose.
Do the regular fdisk/format procedure.

After that is done and qemu is closed, open your qemuboot.bat file and replace -boot a (or -boot d) with -boot c to start from your myCF.img instead to check it it works fine.

Once that's done and qemu is closed again, run hddrawcopytool, choose myCF.img as the source and your CF card as the target, start the writing.
Eject your CF card, put it in your thinclient, see if it boots.

Oh my God, this is very difficult, even for me that I work in computer for ages.

I will try, I promise, just as I will repair two PCs of my collagues.

Thansk for the help anyway, I never thought that a situation could be so difficult with a thin client, never experienced before.

It looks long and complicated, but really it doesn't take more than 10 minutes.
The advantage is you bypass the need for a bootable usb device which may or may not be working well on an old machine or plugging an ide cdrom drive with extra cables everywhere.

^lolo799, I think your explanation/tutorial was splendid. Kudos. 🙂👍

lolo799 wrote on 2022-06-04, 14:38:

It looks long and complicated, but really it doesn't take more than 10 minutes.
The advantage is you bypass the need for a bootable usb device which may or may not be working well on an old machine or plugging an ide cdrom drive with extra cables everywhere.

Finally I returned in this project.

After a various trying, I found a way to make install Windows 2000.

I supply a CD-ROM of another computer and connecting the IDE cable to this client.
Finally I can boot from CD-ROM, I was happy, I tried to install Win2000 and the procedure seems went fine. It formatted the 16GB Compact FLash, it copied all the files, but FUCK, then it reboots it stucks with a cursor on the screen.

I waited a lot, but nothing happens. I am really getting mad with this stupid Thin Client, I wanted to put there Win2000 or Win XP and use this VIA C3 1,0ghz processor, but nothing seems to work when I use that CF.

It can be formatted, I can copy files too..but in this fucking client it seems not to work.

Anyway the Win2000 setup formatted correctly it, and it copied correctly files.

I really don't know what to think, I don't know what to do.

Can be a hardware problem probably with the bus, I don't know.

Perhaps it is the problem that this disk is identified as removable medium.

Disruptor wrote on 2022-12-23, 21:18:

Perhaps it is the problem that this disk is identified as removable medium.

in the bios is identified as primary IDE hard drive.

When I try to boot with Win XP CD-ROM it directly doesn't start, after "boot with CD-ROM prompt appear" nothing more happens.

I guess this thing has USB ports? Is there an option that allows you to boot from USB CD/DVD-Roms perhaps? And use an IDE hard disk instead of the CF card?
This is to test and see if the CF card is the issue.

kiacadp wrote on 2022-12-23, 22:01:

I guess this thing has USB ports? Is there an option that allows you to boot from USB CD/DVD-Roms perhaps? And use an IDE hard disk instead of the CF card?
This is to test and see if the CF card is the issue.

Yes, it has some USB ports.

I am booting from a floppy disk USB now trying FDISK using now.

But when I try to create primary DOS partition on CF it starts and stuck on veritying disk integrity. 0%. Stuck.

It's so strange, cause If I use this CF card in my main computer, I can format, transfer files, and more.

Really really strange situation, I have no clue of what is damaged here. I can use a normal IDE hard disk yes, but I will do tomorrow, cause it's so difficult to supply it like I do with this CD-ROM drive from another case.

So strange that Win2000 installation completing, files copied, and no boot after reboot.

FRUSTRATING

I understand, but if you can manage to use an IDE disk tomorrow that would be great. Have a feeling the disk will work just fine.

biessea wrote on 2022-12-23, 22:06:

Yes, it has some USB ports. […]
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kiacadp wrote on 2022-12-23, 22:01:

I guess this thing has USB ports? Is there an option that allows you to boot from USB CD/DVD-Roms perhaps? And use an IDE hard disk instead of the CF card?
This is to test and see if the CF card is the issue.

Yes, it has some USB ports.

I am booting from a floppy disk USB now trying FDISK using now.

But when I try to create primary DOS partition on CF it starts and stuck on veritying disk integrity. 0%. Stuck.

It's so strange, cause If I use this CF card in my main computer, I can format, transfer files, and more.

Really really strange situation, I have no clue of what is damaged here. I can use a normal IDE hard disk yes, but I will do tomorrow, cause it's so difficult to supply it like I do with this CD-ROM drive from another case.

So strange that Win2000 installation completing, files copied, and no boot after reboot.

FRUSTRATING

kiacadp wrote on 2022-12-23, 22:10:

I understand, but if you can manage to use an IDE disk tomorrow that would be great. Have a feeling the disk will work just fine.

and If it will work, how can I use this thin client with a IDE drive? It is built to use a CF card with primary master IDE drive, as BIOS recognized it.

Well obviously you won't be able to, but at least you know that the CF is the culprit. You'll have to find a CF that plays nice with the client. Different size/brand, industrial, etc. BTW , is this the original CF that came with the machine, the one you are using now?

kiacadp wrote on 2022-12-23, 22:20:

Well obviously you won't be able to, but at least you know that the CF is the culprit. You'll have to find a CF that plays nice with the client. Different size/brand, industrial, etc. BTW , is this the original CF that came with the machine, the one you are using now?

I simply found inside when I opened it but my friend that gave me the client supposed to get rid of this client cause it isn't working.

I don't think it came originally in 2005 (manufactured date) with a SanDisk 16gb class 7 CF don't you think?