My guess is that this BIOS of this PC can't handle more than 8GB disks.

If this is the problem, possible solutions are a BIOS upgrade (if available) or some dynamic drive overlay (DDO) software.

It's a Pentium 4 machine which originally came with a Maxtor 80GB hard disk so it must be able to? Sorry i should of been more specific on the hardware it's on (specs in my sig)

The black and red one?

The problem seems to be, at least on my Igel M310C (designed and made in 2011!), that these large CF cards do somehow support CHS access above the ~8 GB limit and proudly declare themselves this way, while most/every mechanical disk reports 1023:254:63 as maximum CHS sector; the result is that Windows doesn't boot once it gets to the PBR (disk error press any key to restart) but OpenBSD and GRUB2+Linux manage fine...

mine will boot just fine into it but i only get 8gb of disk space.

And yes its the black and red variant of the CF card.

Ok so I've completely wiped my Windows 98 SE install and now I am trying again. Still the same result

I looked in the BIOS there are options for CHS, Large and LBA on the drive i have tried each one and they all produce the same result apart from CHS where fdisk cannot see the drive at all.

So.. I'm a little stuck at this point.. not sure if anything in this option window will help?

This is the IDE converter i am using

Any ideas anyone? I'm really puzzled by this I've never had a CF card problem like this in any of the other builds I've done including other P4 era builds. This card has been used previously on a Toshiba Tecra M2 laptop and gave me the full 32GB no problem what so ever.

It looks like your BIOS is detecting the full disk

Where are you running fdisk from? The Win98 boot cd or floppy? That version should allow large disk support / FAT32. Try deleting all the partitions, restart, and fdisk again and see if it prompts to enable large disk support and properly create correct size partition

drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-11-19, 14:07:

It looks like your BIOS is detecting the full disk

Where are you running fdisk from? The Win98 boot cd or floppy? That version should allow large disk support / FAT32. Try deleting all the partitions, restart, and fdisk again and see if it prompts to enable large disk support and properly create correct size partition

Yes it is which further confuses me.

I am running fdisk from the windows 98 SE CD I unfortunately don't have any floppy disks or the ability to write to a floppy.

I will see if i can boot into some version of Linux and use gparted to completely remove everything but the strange thing is within fdisk i have removed all of them (there was only 1 which was the old windows 98 SE install it had on it) and i checked after to view all partitions and there was nothing but that is maybe a fdisk limitation?

I does also prompt me to enable large disk support which i always say yes to BUT when creating the primary DOS partition it only prompts me once from memory at that stage it does two prompts with two disk verification's, right? I'm i am correct with this then it is not doing that.

I have also tried your method of restarting and going back into it. it does the same thing its really odd.

I will try some stuff and report my findings.

Ok so the plot thickens... this is getting really strange now.

So I booted into Hirens Boot CD as most Linux distros dont like this machine due to the tiny amount of RAM. I got into a partition tool and...

So, fdisk is indeed not using the whole disk. (Second disk is bootable usb so ignore that) I tried to partition it myself (FAT32, set as active) and fdisk then saw the disk properly.

So for the sake of it i tried wiping it and using fdisk to create it.

By doing so i got this prompt??? I'm guessing from the BIOS????

Once complete...

???? so confused ha! I partitioned it again after from the boot CD and tried to just installed Windows 98 without fdisk and Windows 98 setup complained about the disk.

So I'm currently zero'ing the drive so its completely fresh and then I'm going to try and partition it from the boot CD. Either blank so hopefully windows 98 tries to format it or... i don't really know. And that prompt i've never seen before so god knows what thats all about.

Crazy.

switch the access mode to LBA and try again with removing the partition, rebooting, and creating it.

FYI. if in fdisk it says :
Total disk space is 8062 Megabytes

don't bother creating the partition, dos or fdisk does not see the full disk.

OK you manually partitioned and was recognized. Why not just format the partition at that point and then see if Windows will install, and boot?
format /v:labelname /u /s c:

drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-11-19, 17:27:

OK you manually partitioned and was recognized. Why not just format the partition at that point and then see if Windows will install, and boot?
format /v:labelname /u /s c:

I tried, windows 98 setup didn't like the disk nor tried to format it

I went back into the boot CD partitioned it as blank and rebooted then windows 98 formatted it, installed and now it's full size.

I have no idea why fdisk didn't like it but got there in the end.

dreamscape86 wrote on 2022-11-19, 18:23:

I tried, windows 98 setup didn't like the disk nor tried to format it […]
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drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-11-19, 17:27:

OK you manually partitioned and was recognized. Why not just format the partition at that point and then see if Windows will install, and boot?
format /v:labelname /u /s c:

I tried, windows 98 setup didn't like the disk nor tried to format it

I went back into the boot CD partitioned it as blank and rebooted then windows 98 formatted it, installed and now it's full size.

I have no idea why fdisk didn't like it but got there in the end.

w00t

Even though your BIOS detect 4095 cylinders, and correctly reports the size of the device, it looks like your system is still hitting the Final ECHS limit when it comes to DOS - geometry up to 8.4 GB (C=1024, H=255, S=63)

You need to find a way to do enable Cylinders > 1024 or enable LBA to go larger than that. Consider changing the access mode to LBA here:

If that doesn't work, look for a BIOS upgrade, an Option ROM like XTide or install a dynamic drive overlay

Yup, had the same exact problem... As well it was with Win98se, a pentium2, and a hard disk with 20gb. After I wiped everything from the disk, I run fdisk and it was telling me I have only 8gb available. Bios was clearly showing me the whole 20 instead... I guess it was a problem with the boot disk I've been using...

dreamscape86 wrote on 2022-11-19, 14:01:

https://i.postimg.cc/zXgJ8zxv/20221119-133150.jpg […]
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Yep, we have the same BIOS core even though the problem is different* (I used Linux's fdisk with the cylinder alignment option, or FreeDOS's with the XA advanced option on, to create a single type C active partition)...

* and yours is even more puzzling: surely a Pentium 4 computer would at least have been tried with 9x and a contemporary disk needing LBA?