Win 98 failure after trying Knoppix

[Alan]

I need some ideas please.

Using Win 98 and thought I would try Linux. In order to minimise damage I tried Knoppix 3.2 -2003.06.06.

Had to use boot disk and CD to get up and running which was successful!

Removed CD and boot disk and now cannot boot Win 98 from hard drive. Tried win 98 recovery floppy to be informed that hard drive doesn't have any FAT or FAT32 partitions and suggests reformat.

The hard drive is available when I run Knoppix. I will probably move to Linux when more familiar but I need to get at windows for now.

The other thing I noticed is that I had to create a floppy for Knoppix - previously on reinstalling Win98 I could boot from CD. I fear something fundamental has failed.

Any suggestions gratefully received!!

Alan

[Loper]

Using Win 98 and thought I would try Linux... removed CD and boot disk and now cannot boot Win 98 from hard drive.

That's a new one on me. It's unusual for something like that to happen, since Knoppix really doesn't touch your hard drive... but let's try a couple of things. First, let me say that I'm a computer tech by profession, so I speak from some experience.

Start with your CMOS setup. Is it possible that it's no longer set to boot from C or IDE 0?

The next thing I would suggest is to try your recovery disk again. In this case, fdisk is your friend, but use it with care.

First, try fdisk /mbr at the command prompt. This rewrites the master boot record. If that doesn't do the trick, run just fdisk at the command prompt and check that the first partition is made active.

That's it for now. At least your data seems safe. Let us know what happens!

[Stephen]

In addition to the suggestions above you should track down a testing program and run it also check for bios updates for the motherboard. And do the usual stuff like check the connections, change the cables, etc..

[Alan]

Thank you for your help so far

CMOS works just fine but I cannot boot from the IDE drive (or CD drive with the windows CD) irrespective of where on the boot list I put the hard drive (1st to 4th).

I tried the recovery disk with fdisk/mbr but got a "no fixed drives" error message.

I haven't opened the box to physically check the cables but when I boot with Knoppix I can read both of the partitions on the disk without any trouble at all.

I can't work out where the system falls down. If the FAT tables were corrupted or mising then I would presume that Knoppix wouldn't be able to find anything either.

It seems to me that CMOS is having difficulty in finding the drive to boot from (or to fdisk) but has no problem once the operating system is up!

Any further suggestions?

Alan

[Dave_Bechtel]

--I had the "no fixed drives" error happen to a friend a while back. Never really figured out what it was, altho I assumed it was a virus and recommended he replace the HD. How big is your drive, and how old? Are you getting any S.M.A.R.T. warnings on boot?

--If in the end nothing works, I recommend you take it to a professional computer shop in your area. Might be the motherboard.

Thank you for your help so far

CMOS works just fine but I cannot boot from the IDE drive (or CD drive with the windows CD) irrespective of where on the boot list I put the hard drive (1st to 4th).

I tried the recovery disk with fdisk/mbr but got a "no fixed drives" error message.

I haven't opened the box to physically check the cables but when I boot with Knoppix I can read both of the partitions on the disk without any trouble at all.

I can't work out where the system falls down. If the FAT tables were corrupted or mising then I would presume that Knoppix wouldn't be able to find anything either.

It seems to me that CMOS is having difficulty in finding the drive to boot from (or to fdisk) but has no problem once the operating system is up!

Any further suggestions?

Alan

[Stephen]

Linux does not need the bios to access the drive whereas windows does. Looks like you are going to have to open the case and try to reset the bios with the jumper which may be there otherwise you would have to remove the backup battery to reset and this assumes the bios is just corrupt not bad in which case you will have to replace it. As I stated above it is time to get a testing program and run it and while your at it use knoppix to backup any important data you have on the drive while you can still get access to it.

[Alan]

Thanks for the help

It seems that it may be a long night!

Alan

[Loper]

Hmmm... interesting problems. Of course trying to do this long distance is a pain for both of us, but we'll press on regardless.

Another thing that strikes me is: how big is your hard drive? Did you have to use a manufacturer's utility disk to partition/format it? Have you tried a manufacturer's utility disk to access the drive? Even if the answer to the first question is "no" it might be a good idea to try that route -- Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital all have freely-downloadable utility disks that you could download if you don't already have one.

I must admit that it seems strange that Knoppix sees the drives, but Win 98 does not; we may be able to use that for diagnostics. Under Knoppix, open a shell command-line window (like an MS-DOS window under Windows) -- it's the icon in the taskbar that looks like a monitor screen superimposed with a stylized shell -- and type in sudo cfdisk. This will display the disk geometry as Linux sees it. The partitions will be named starting with hda1. The next partition usually will be named hda5 (since it's a logical drive). The first partition should say BOOT, which corresponds to the fdisk active tag.

Let us know what you find out.

[Alan]

I have tried sudo cfdisk and get
hda1 Boot Primary FAT16 2146.8MB
hda5 Logical Win95 FAT32 4301.83MB

I can use the gateway bootdisk supplied with the computer to scan the hard drive for errors and it reports all 6.4Gb is working and error free.

I haven't tried a CMOS reset yet as I want to try to recover as much data as possible before I do anything fatal.
Can you help with the data recovery process too?
Do you know how I get the knoppix box to be visible to my windows XP pro laptop so that I can copy all of the drives over whilst I still have access?
I have a lan setup with DSL acces through a router giving DHCP. The knoppix box must be able to communicate with the router as I can access the web with Mozilla. I can ping the linux box from XP but don't know how to give it access to the drives

Once again thanks for the help - it is very much appreciated!

Hmmm... interesting problems. Of course trying to do this long distance is a pain for both of us, but we'll press on regardless.

Another thing that strikes me is: how big is your hard drive? Did you have to use a manufacturer's utility disk to partition/format it? Have you tried a manufacturer's utility disk to access the drive? Even if the answer to the first question is "no" it might be a good idea to try that route -- Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital all have freely-downloadable utility disks that you could download if you don't already have one.

I must admit that it seems strange that Knoppix sees the drives, but Win 98 does not; we may be able to use that for diagnostics. Under Knoppix, open a shell command-line window (like an MS-DOS window under Windows) -- it's the icon in the taskbar that looks like a monitor screen superimposed with a stylized shell -- and type in sudo cfdisk. This will display the disk geometry as Linux sees it. The partitions will be named starting with hda1. The next partition usually will be named hda5 (since it's a logical drive). The first partition should say BOOT, which corresponds to the fdisk active tag.

Let us know what you find out.

[iconfly]

I wonder if gpart would help? gpart is on the knoppix cd. It should find the partions, and allow you to write this info back to disk. Would be worth a try if all else fails. I found some good info on gpart by running a google search.
To just try gpart, run it from a command window. Good luck! Jimmy.