Re: [Freedos-user] Problems with FreeFDISK ?

2006-08-11 Thread Stegozor
On 8/10/06, Gerry Hickman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What you did sounds muddled to me.

I often do weird things, you know :)

> I have a whole network of PCs that were all partitioned from within
> FreeDOS BETA and associated FDISK program. Obviously I check things like
> BIOS aupport, controller type, UDMA spec, LBA and cylinder boundaries
> before doing anything to any kind of hard drive.

You do so because you can. My computer related knowledge is limited,
unfortunately. Some people are born and die as newbies...
All I can say is that my mother board is a Asus A7V333, the CPU an AMD
Athlon XP 2000+ (running at 1,2 Ghz, voluntary Bios setting), 384 Mb
of RAM and the hard disk is a WDC WD200BB-00DEA0 (I did a mistake
about the brand of the hard drive on the USENET thread).

> You appear to be saying you ran it under WinME's version of DOS? In

Right.

> theory, FreeDOS is compatible with MS-DOS, but I'd never risk actually
> running FDISK like that. The rest of your environment is unclear (UMBs etc)

I live dangerously, I know :) In fact, I replaced FreeFdisk just to
see how it looked, but indeed it wasn't probably the best thing to do.

> The concept of ubuntu being able to "recover" the disk sounds odd too?

It was definitely good news, but since Windows Me wasn't able to
format, it surprised me.
For another opinion, please see: http://tinyurl.com/zclvh (Google Groups).

> If it wasn't formatted, there could not have been much to recover? You

I already had a backup of relevant data (address book and some Open
Office documents), therefore erasing the disk wasn't a problem, I
_wanted_ to format the disk.
Seems that I misused the "recovering" word, sorry. In fact, as I
thought that the disk was nearly dead, I was seeking for a way to make
it usable again.

> can zap partitions and MBR at any time with FreeDOS FDISK.

FreeDOS never told that there was a problem, it did what I asked quite
nicely. The problem was that FORMAT was unable to do its job after
FreeFDISK. I don't know what the problem exactly is (or was).

> I can't imagine what you were trying to achieve or why you decided to
> use Windows ME's startup disk?

It was just a desperate attempt, because I couldn't format using the
boot diskette. As you can now see the USENET thread (below), you'll
see that I had supposed (and many other people taking part to this
thread) that the disk was out of service.

> The links to the newsgroup posts are not working for me, not sure why?

Well, in fact, it was a URI, very close to a Message-ID. Try this one :
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.comp.hardware/msg/a15b10368e2a1b49 ,
click on the subject to view the entire thread. As the discussion is
recent, you should find it on your news server.

> If you still have a blank hard drive and want to do more tests I'd

Not anymore, as I finally switched to Ubuntu GNU/Linux (and I'm
struggling without success to make dosemu work on it)... If it is
really useful, I can do some more testing

Let me summarize my story: after having partitioned the hard disk
using FreeFdisk, I couldn't format some of these partitions. The
workaround was to boot on a Ubuntu CD. As I related my experience on
news:alt.comp.hardware, two contributors suggested that the
partitioning could have been screwed, and one of them told that he had
problems with FreeFDISK.
That's why I posted a message here, hoping that the feedback might
help the project in some way.

> suggest you boot into FreeDOS, use the /CLEARALL option to clear
> everything from the drive then try again. You'll find FreeDOS FDISK is
> the best FDISK ever released and has the most powerful command line.
> (be sure to test EMM386 very carefully if you use it, as this can lead
> to all kinds of crazy results, although recent versions may be OK, I
> don't know as I don't use it)

I'll archive these lines.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Problems with FreeFDISK ?

2006-08-10 Thread Gerry Hickman
Hi,

What you did sounds muddled to me.

I have a whole network of PCs that were all partitioned from within 
FreeDOS BETA and associated FDISK program. Obviously I check things like 
BIOS aupport, controller type, UDMA spec, LBA and cylinder boundaries 
before doing anything to any kind of hard drive.

You appear to be saying you ran it under WinME's version of DOS? In 
theory, FreeDOS is compatible with MS-DOS, but I'd never risk actually 
running FDISK like that. The rest of your environment is unclear (UMBs etc)

The concept of ubuntu being able to "recover" the disk sounds odd too? 
If it wasn't formatted, there could not have been much to recover? You 
can zap partitions and MBR at any time with FreeDOS FDISK.

I can't imagine what you were trying to achieve or why you decided to 
use Windows ME's startup disk?

The links to the newsgroup posts are not working for me, not sure why?

If you still have a blank hard drive and want to do more tests I'd 
suggest you boot into FreeDOS, use the /CLEARALL option to clear 
everything from the drive then try again. You'll find FreeDOS FDISK is 
the best FDISK ever released and has the most powerful command line.

(be sure to test EMM386 very carefully if you use it, as this can lead 
to all kinds of crazy results, although recent versions may be OK, I 
don't know as I don't use it)

Stegozor wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> A few days ago, I created a boot diskette created under Windows
> Millenium (virus free according to ClamWin), and replaced FDISK by
> FreeFDISK on that diskette. After that, I created several partitions
> using FreeDISK, but was unable to format some partitions on the disk
> using neither FORMAT, nor the install process of the Windows Me CD.
> Finally, I recovered the hard disk thanks to Ubuntu 6.06 CD that
> partitioned and installed like a charm.
> 
> While I was suffering, I posted a message on news:alt.comp.hardware to
> know whether my disk was dying. Some contibutors suggested that the
> partitionning could be screwed, and one clearly stated that the
> problem might have been caused by FreeFDISK and that he had seen
> similar problems on 3 computers before. (
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ).
> 
> So, I thought that reporting my experience here could be useful. Let's
> hope that this is a "false positive".
> You may find more information on the USENET thread: See
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] and the
> replies.
> 
> -
> Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security?
> Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier
> Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo
> http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642
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-- 
Gerry Hickman (London UK)

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