Hello, Wayne.
I see you've been given some good advice in this echo and in WIN95
echo, and I'm glad I posted this topic here.

 -=> on 02-26-05 18:19, WAYNE CHIRNSIDE wrote to TOM WALKER <=-

 -> -> Hewlett Packard OEM CD.
 -> That could make things more understandable.  tweek their "OEM" CD's to be very fully automated. THey
just march off
 -> and leave you behind and you cannot stop it from Fdisking and Formatting
 -> until lit is too late

Two kinds of OEM CD discs out there - - one type (generic OEM), as I
have here, has written on it "For distribution with a new PC only."
Another type, would have something like "For distribution only with a
new HP PC."    I assume this is the kind you have, and it most likely
_has_ been customized by HP for thier equipment.  But that isn't
_necessarily_ what caused it to farkle your HDD.

You had reported earlier that Win98FE started installing properly, but
that the installation failed "for lack of a driver."   An interval
ensued, and at your most recent attempt, that is when it appears that
Win FDISK ran without your permission, farkeling your HDD in the
process.  What baffles me is the different outcome of those two attempts
to install.  It certainly would appear that something changed in the
interval between your installation attempts.  You are the only one here
with knowledge of that - - does anything come to mind?

Next, after the HDD farkle, you say that Linux FDISK first saw your 65GB
HDD as some other size, 85GB or something.  And now you say that Linux
FDISK doesn't even see the HDD anymore.  Does anything come to mind as
to what may have changed that result?

Back to the Promise card - - you say that now the Promise card doesn't
"see" the HDD>  Here's how it works here, where I have my main HDD on
this machine running Win98SE and another HDD, loaded with Win, attached
to the Promise card.  (Main HDD ends up as C:, and HDD on the Promise
card ends up as D:/E: after full boot).  At boot startup, before the
splash screen from onboard BIOS shows what drives are attached there,
the BIOS on the Promise card takes over.  After couple seconds noted as
"Detecting,"  where I see a little "|" sign rotating
clock-wise, a
splash screen from the Promise card shows, showing what drives are
autodetected by the Promise card.  The one here shows - -

D0 = Maxtor 3.xx GB HDD, etc.
D1 =  (blank)
D2 = Samsung CDROM drive
D3 =  (blank)

If you don't see your HDD as autodetected by the Promise card in this
manner, I think very unlikely that FDISK and HDD Mfgr utility will
work to repair the drive, since no HDD controller on the machine knows
that it has that HDD attached.

I think that suggestion to get your drive to a mobo which _will_
properly FDISK a 65GB drive was a good one.  Other than that, if you
still have any idea to try and do a dual boot on it and include Win98FE,
it _might_ alleviate the chance of another catastrophe if you were to
only FDISK partitions up to a total of 64GB or less.  Best do some
checking on that one before you spend a lot of time loading software.

  ************
FWIW, I have seen no indication that the Promise card has ability to
show CHS and landzone parameters for the drive, and no choice WRT LBA
translations of CHS.  My main HDD in this machine isn't seen by the
Promise card either, and from Promise FAQ, I think it must have a prob
with the LBA translation currently on the drive, shown by SETUP in the
onboard BIOS, and stored to mainboard CMOS, where it works just fine.
When attached to the Promise card, the card detects the HDD, but locks
up and system won't boot to it.  It returns a HDD Failed msg.

Also FWIW,  for the installation here,  Win98SE sees the Promise card as
a SCSI device, and a single IRQ (11), is assigned to the card, covering
both IDE/ATAPI channels.  The card supports ATAPI devices, but only
after the proper driver for the card is installed in Windows or
other PnP OS (LInux).  Even after HDD is fully recognized by the Promise
card, and CDROM drive shows on the spash screen I mentioned above, the
ATAPI CDROM drive will not be found by the DOS based driver
(oakcdrom.sys) used by Win9x, or any of the SCSI HDD drivers which are
on the Win9x emergency/startup diskette.

So, trying to load Win9x onto HDD on Promise card will have to be as you
tried it -  with the CDROM drive attached to the onboard IDE.  The CDROM
drive can be moved to the Promise card later.

The driver software I downloaded from the Promise website is about
worthless, and didn't work.  It is a faulty copy from a diskette which
originally had separate directories for drivers for Win2K, Win95-98,
WinNT4, and WinMe.  It comes through minus the subdirectories, with
multiple instances of different files with same filename. I'm running
the Promise card here with the driver sw I got from the MicronPC
website.

One somewhat interesting thing about the Promise card.  The HDD I have
on it already had Win98 loaded on it, so I disabled IDE0 on my
mainboard, and the thing booted to the HDD on the Promise card. I loaded
the Promise driver onto it also, and I now have a dual boot system - - I
can boot to either hdd, and move the cable from the CDROM back and forth
from Promise card to IDE1 on my mainboard, and get CDROM support either
way.

The above 5 or so paras reflect my experience here with a Promise
ULTRA66 card. YMMV (and usually does ;-)).

- - -  JimH.







- - -  JimH.















 WC> You've got it.
 WC> That's EXACTLY what happened.
 WC> Toast in the blink of an eye.
 WC> Now Linux doesn't even recognize the drive :-(













... "Inquiring minds want to know." - - Bubba
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