Emergency WIN95 problems with additional HD--need help of you experts!!

[stingygrrl]

Hi
My friend was running a Dell PC with win 95 on C. We installed a maxtor 20GB hd and ran the maxblast software and formatted adn made 4 equal size partitions on the new one, as well as 'imaging' the original drive to one new partition on the new HD).

We screw3d up the install big time and it was trying to boot off the new one (it needed to be cable select)-- it wasn't until several hours later that we found out that it was booting the first partition on the new hard drive (that had the image on it) as C and then the old C as D --- and finally we got the drive and partitions recognized in the right order. But in the meantime, we messed up win95 on C. In the command prompt, we can see the drives, sizes adn theotectically the data.

So, after talking to MS for about 2 hours, they said we have to unistall internet explorer before we can reinstall win95 over itself. MS suggested not installing Win98 over win95, at this point.

So here are my questions:

1) On the MS site, we have found two articles, Q175610 and Q174549, relating to uninstalling IE4, but I think she has IE5. Will the the article still apply? Couldn't find anything about IE5 there.

2) Assuming we get win95 reinstalled, I suppose it won't see the new HD bc the partitions are too big? What do we do? Do we have to repartition? Is there some way to salvage the data on that maxtor? (She has no CD burner or zip or anything like that).

3) Anything else we need to know? We will be reattacking the situation Mon eve EST.

4) I have no way to tell what version of win95 is on that install CD.

5) In the worst case scenario, can I just plug that maxtor into my win98SE PC and still boot from my C and span CDs with that image?
--Does win98 have a size restriction on partitions adn will we have boot problems (I have installed CD burners into mine as slaves-
--does that mean that if I put the maxtor in it would also be a slave or mightbe be cable select)?

Thanks everyone.

 

[AndyHui]

Um...where do I start?

As long as you are using Win95B (4.00.1111) or Win95C (4.00.1212), there should be no trouble with partitions up to 32GB in size.

Under a DOS/Win9x scheme, all primary partitions come first, then extended/logicals come afterwards. The primary partition from the Primary Master drive go first, then the primary partition from Primary Slave go next, and so on.

Is the original Windows installation from the old C: still intact? If so, simply copy it across to the new drive's primary active partition again.

Drives are only cable select if it has been jumpered to do so, and you are using ATA66 cables. I suggest you change the jumpers to reflect master or slave.

IE5 will uninstall the same way that IE4 will.

 

[sygyzy]

Hmm hmm hmm this is quite the challenge. I read your story twice and I still don't get what you are trying to say. I am going to assume a few things. 1) You have a new 20 GB as a primary drive which replaced the old drive. You have the 20GB divided into 4 partitions and you copied the D: (old) drive into the first partition of the 20GB. So here goes. Since you are using Max Blast, I would install the NEWHD as C: and the OLDHD as D:. Then use the partition and format utils to do what you need. Then copy the D: over thus mirroring your drive. I guess you already did what I said right? I don't really see this as a problem however. If this didn't/doesn't work, you still have a perfectly bootable OLDHD. Why not start over again? Also, why are you using cable select?

1) I don't know.

2) If you install Win95 successfully on the NEWHD, I would think it would see the partitions fine.

3) Not that I know

4) On the cd there might be a ver.exe or you can always open the setup.exe with edit and see the version. There are other places it might be such as install.inf, setup.inf

5) Yes you can do that but I am unclear about your spanning CD's question.

Sorry, I am trying to help and I don't think this is urgent as it sounds. Maybe you can clear it up a bit? Good luck!

 

[stingygrrl]

Here's a few basic answers:
it was cable select bc that's how Dells come, or at least this one. Setting it to master/slave made the first partition on the new HD show up as C, adn the old one as D. That was the source of the problems, I guess. Old C was imaged to New HD partition1, but there was a software issue booting win95, something about a invalid vxd call to setting 3 part b or something.

Just to give you an idea of the problem, we couldn't boot from with of these configurations:
1st partition of new hd <=> old C's image----> no boot
old C = C; new hard drive partition1 = D --> still no boot.

Anyway, after about 10 hours, we gave up on master/slave and tried cable select and we got the drives and partitions showing up in the correct order:

old hard drive C = same (2 GB)
first part on new = D = 5 GB
2 partitions on old hard drive E (1.5 GB), F (.5 GB)== I dunno know. I appeared after the fact
3 remaining partitions on new hard drive = G,H,I= 5 GB each

NOW we have to get an OS on C without losing any data. Or get the data to my PC. Or both. In that day of futzing with it, the OS on old C is f*ck3d.

Can I pop out either of those hard drives into my system, and expect that it won't affect my booting off my C: (Win 98SE)? Then if I can see the drives and access the data, then at least we can backup to CDs. (I know, I told her but she didn't or couldn't).