mike_canada wrote on 2021-08-13, 01:28:

maybe it's just FDISK, but I'm having one heck of a time trying to boot from the local hard drive after an OS transfer. […]
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maybe it's just FDISK, but I'm having one heck of a time trying to boot from the local hard drive after an OS transfer.

Let me explain.

I have a CD which represents a bootable MS-DOS 6.22 hard drive.

I then run FDISK and change drive letters to D to access the hard drive, and I create a partition to use maximum space. I reboot the computer then I format drive D as a system disk with this command:

format d:/s

then I copy all the contents from the CD to the hard drive being careful not to overwrite existing files.

I then reboot the computer and remove the CD. and then it asks me to insert the system disk (at the bios level). So I do it, and maybe the MBR is damaged, so I try:

fdisk /mbr

and I get this error:

Error reading fixed disk. The master boot code has NOT been updated.

I also tried in fdisk to set the active partition to be on my hard drive and it gives me this error:

Current fixed disk drive: 2
Only partitions on Drive 1 can be made active.

yet my drive 1 is the image on the bootable CD and drive 2 is the actual writable hard drive.

What could I be doing wrong?

Is BIOS bootsector virus protection enabled ? Often labeled Chipaway antivirus in BIOS setup .

What was the hdd set up as? Master, Slave or cable select?

What system are you doing this giggery pokery on? Real or some VM?

the hard drive is fine otherwise I wouldn't be able to read to or write from it

That didn't answer my questions.. oh welll.....

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-08-13, 01:40:

What was the hdd set up as? Master, Slave or cable select?

Its a flash drive set as master and the bios recognizes it fine and I can write data to it.

What system are you doing this giggery pokery on? Real or some VM?

Real Dell Wyse thinclient with an external USB DVD/RW drive

blah.

After you set up the partition the first time around, and can't get the drive/cf to boot, If you then boot again off the cd, is the hard drive/cf card still the second drive?
If it isn't and it's the first drive, you should be able to run fdisk /mbr and activate the partition, which should allow the flash drive to then boot.
if it isn't... well you'll need a different tool, or some debug magic to edit the mbr on the flash drive, activate the partition and make sure the mbr boot code is present.

weedeewee wrote on 2021-08-13, 20:29:

blah. […]
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blah.

After you set up the partition the first time around, and can't get the drive/cf to boot, If you then boot again off the cd, is the hard drive/cf card still the second drive?
If it isn't and it's the first drive, you should be able to run fdisk /mbr and activate the partition, which should allow the flash drive to then boot.
if it isn't... well you'll need a different tool, or some debug magic to edit the mbr on the flash drive, activate the partition and make sure the mbr boot code is present.

The cf drive is always identified as the second drive and the bootable CD is always identified as a read-only primary hard drive partition.

What tool that would work with Dos 6.22 and up would you recommend I use?

mike_canada wrote on 2021-08-13, 22:12:

weedeewee wrote on 2021-08-13, 20:29:

blah. […]
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blah.

After you set up the partition the first time around, and can't get the drive/cf to boot, If you then boot again off the cd, is the hard drive/cf card still the second drive?
If it isn't and it's the first drive, you should be able to run fdisk /mbr and activate the partition, which should allow the flash drive to then boot.
if it isn't... well you'll need a different tool, or some debug magic to edit the mbr on the flash drive, activate the partition and make sure the mbr boot code is present.

The cf drive is always identified as the second drive and the bootable CD is always identified as a read-only primary hard drive partition.

What tool that would work with Dos 6.22 and up would you recommend I use?

I can't recommend anything to you since I'm lacking this knowledge you seek, though my suggestion would be to google for it.
my first google attempt leads me to this https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/FDISK.htm which offers some insights into fdisk and some alternatives which might suit your need.

A few other alternatives for the older MS-FDISK versions would be GDISK and GDISK32 from Norton Ghost, AEFDISK and the utility, Ranish Partition Manager, which can also format the partitions it creates (supports FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32).

and on the same site https://thestarman.pcministry.com/tool/de/PTS-DE.htm

though all of this is just from a quick google. I'm pretty sure someone else has some better suggestions for a good command line fdisk replacement for dos.

I have talked to that starman guy (from the links you gave) and he seems to be knowledgeable. Let's hope he can give me an answer to this issue.

SOLVED

I had to indicate in my bios which drives it should try to boot from and all this time I only specified USB CD-ROM and I never specified the hard drive.