I’m not sure about NTFS permissions when accessing the files from Win98. I suspect you wouldn’t have any trouble.
The administrator should be able to take ownership of all the files from a different Win2K machine.
FDISK /MBR is definitely worth a shot before you do anything drastic.
LAWMAN is the codename for the mobo. Lawman is an Intel OEM board w/a Phoenix BIOS IIRC (ex senior Gateway tech here 
).
I would also do this:
critter42
Number, I haven’t tried FDISK /MBR yet, but I promise to do so before I do anything drastic.
critter42, your previous experience gives you alot of credibility. Following your instructions, I’ve at least run across some flaky behavior. I followed your instructions 1-4, no problem. In Step 5, when I first restarted, I didn’t get the “CMOS checksum error”, but it did report that the CMOS setting was wrong and the CMOS display Type was Wrong, and run Setup. In setup, I only set the date and time. But this is where it got interesting. I did check the primary IDE Master setting, which was set to auto, but showed no drive. I checked the other IDE settings (the drives had been disconnected, per your instruction), and didn’t see any other drives. When I went back to the Primary IDE Master, it did show the Max Cap of 12 GB. I saved and exited (F10 and enter). When the system displayed the BIOS settings (after POST), it did show the Primary Master HD, as it normally (and previously) did. When I hit ESC to resume the bootup, I got a Drive Not Ready on A: drive (like it didn’t see the HD anymore). I put in the Win2K boot disks I created yesterday, and recieved the message “Couldn’t Open the boot partition to check for a signature” and then the “Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration…” message, at which point, the computer hung.
I shutdown and removed the HD from the Primary controller (so that nothing was on primary), and added the HD to the secondary controller, and restarted. I went into BIOS setup, and couldn’t see the HD. I exited and on the BIOS settings display, it showed the CDROM as the secondary master, and proceeded to hang. I shutdown, and removed the CD-Rom from the secondary controller. Went into the BIOS setup again, and it didn’t see the harddrive. However, if I went in and out of the Secondary IDE Master data entry screen about four times, it suddenly appeared. When I saved and exited, the BIOS display again did not show it. And of course, the system hung.
So I went back into BIOS setup, went into the Secondary IDE Master configuration, went in an out until it recognized the drive (three times, this time), and then changed it to User Definable. I verified that the Cylinders, heads, and sectors were set same as it was when it was working, and proceeded to save and exit. On reboot, after the POST test, I got a “WAIT…” for about 15 seconds, then the BIOS display did show the HD, but after BIOS screen, the screen went black and the system hung (just like the problem originally reported).
So, I disconnected the first HD, reconnected the CD-ROM on the secondary controller, then attached the second HD on the primary controller (changing the PINs to be master instead of its previous slave setting). When I went into the BIOS, it didn’t see the other HD at all. Nothing I did could get it recognize that the second HD was even there. So now I am back to being at Wits End.
critter42, do you, by chance, know where I might find the older version of BIOS that I was using? Or do you think that this problem is not likely solved by going back to my original BIOS version?
OK, so now I have reset the second HD to be slave, reconnected the first HD (as master), and reconnected the CD-Rom (everything back to its original state, except all cards are out and the Iomega Zip drive is disconnected (was secondary slave).
I used the NVRAM jumper to reset NVRAM/CMOS. When I went back into BIOS setup, both HD were displayed. After exiting Setup, the BIOS displayed showed both HDs and the CDROM (back to where I was earlier).
Went ahead and boot to the Win98 floppy. Went into FDISK, everything was the same as last reported (including the EXT DOS “system type” on the first HD). Per the suggestions here, I went back out of FDISK, and ran FDISK /MBR. The command did not report any messages, and returned me to my A:> prompt. I shutdown, restarted, and this time, after the BIOS display, it reports, “Missing Operating System”.
Shutdown, restarted, went into BIOS setup, change Boot Order to CD-ROM, rebooted to Win2K CD, and the system hung on the “Setup is inspecting the hardware configuration…”
Unless I can find an older BIOS, I am ready to give up on this system (I don’t know what else to try). I can’t easily put this drive in another system, since my other Win2K boxes are laptops. I suppose I could try the NTFSDOS Professional to try and mount the NTFS files system from one of my Win98 boxes, but I think I will just load Win2K on one of them. Then I’ll attempt to add the first HD as a primary slave, and hopefully will be able to read the data.
If any one has any other suggestions (not involving doorstops or boat anchors), I’m all ears.
woops sorry about last post :smack:
Have you tried a bios flash floppy, made specifically for win2k, looks to me, new gateway bios doesn’t support win2k.
http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/ddaStep.asp step 2
(from Raven, Auliya’s son)
Raven, I couldn’t follow your link except to the Gateway All Download search screen. If you put in “Not Desktop Specific Model”, “Win2K”, and “BIOS”, you’ll get 75 results. Search the results page for “0AAES054”, you’ll see it supports All Operating Systems. If you click More Information on that entry, you’ll see my motherboard part number posted above as supported. And considering I was running Win2K on the system for the past year, I’d be really surprised to learn that a later update DIDN’t support Win2K. Please post another link if I am missing something.
Thread Readers: PS, I’ve moved the first HD to a system currently on Win98, and am now installing Win2K on that system. Windows Setup did see the other drive with both partitions, and I am installing on the (other) disk that was in the Win98 system.
And FYI, I did check the BIOS version on this other machine (an HP Vectra XA/200, Pentium Pro). Luckily, it was the latest and greatest. I’d have been in quite a dilemna if it wasn’t. I’m not sure I would be comfortable trying update it!
sorry I’m so late responding…I keep odd hours sometimes Anyway, one last thing you can try is to try to do an emergency BIOS recovery. Take the jumper that’s right underneath the password/NVRAM clear jumper, and short the pins, then put the floppy disk in that you used to flash the BIOS with in the first place. Restart the computer…it will automatically hit the floppy and start reflashing itself. IIRC, there won’t be any indication on screen that anything’s happening (ie, it will be a black display). After a short time you’ll hear 6 beeps and the floppy drive access light will go out. Don’t, I repeat DON’T do anything with the system until you hear those 6 beeps. If you have to wait two hours before you hear those beeps, wait two hours (an exaggeration, but I can’t stress enough how important this step is ). Shut the machine down, put the jumper back where it was, and restart the machine. Hit F1 to go into setup as soon as you start to boot up, then immediately hit F10 and then Enter. (actually you may want to go ahead and set the CD-ROM drive to be the first boot device while you’re here)
(BTW, these steps are on the link I referenced above - under the “Flash recover jumper” section at the very bottom of the page)
Now, I don’t know how important the data is to you, but what I would do is boot to the Win2k CD, and instead of re-installing, hit “R” for the recovery console. I believe you can repair the MBR for NTFS from there (been awhile since I used the console - can a Win2k guru come along with the right commands to use to repair the boot sector and the MBR from the recovery console?).
critter42
I have just read the OP so this might be mentioned.
If your computer is overclocked an upgrade of the OS may not work even thought the prevoius OS worked fine.
k2dave, thanks, but the processor is not overclocked, and I wasn’t updating the OS, just the flash BIOS.
In the meantime, I did get the (new) Win2K system up, and have been able to recover all the data I need. I feel better about that, and that I now can verify that the drives themselves are functioning fine.
I have some confidence that I can reinstall Win98 on the system, since I can boot with a Win98 startup disk, access FDISK, and it sees the drives. I am at least quite certain I could repartition the disk as FAT32, and then attempt to install Win98. I may run into the same problem then I have now, I’m not sure. If I can install Win98, then maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to get the Win2K CD to boot.
But I would prefer to recover the system. So I am going to attempt critter42’s suggestion.
Since I have now backed up the data, I have moved the first HD back to my dead system, and set the jumpers as the single drive. The BIOS sees it correctly (but reports “Missing Operating System” if I attempt to boot from it). I shut it down, moved the FLASH UPDATE jumper to short the pins, placed the flash BIOS update floppy in the drive, and then restarted. No signal to the display at all (as you predicted). The floppy drive light is on, the computer is sending two beeps repetitively (beep, beep, … beep, beep, … etc.) It has been doing so for about 10 minutes. Funny, it sounds like a heart monitor. My wife suggests that it sounds like it is on life support. Patience is not my strong suit, but I will try to wait it out.
If this fails, and I haven’t done further damage, I’ll go back to try to install Win98. If I am unsuccessful with that, I guess I will have more spare parts for my other systems.
Although, one last thought, critter42, I ask again, any idea where I might be able to find the previous version of the BIOS I was running?
OK, so this update procedure has been going on for close to two hours, and I am convinced it isn’t working. I suspect that the two beeps I am hearing are part of the BIOS beep code. Two beeps indicate a parity error (and likely means a memory or motherboard problem). Of course, I am now concerned about shutting the thing off (but the repetitive two beeps is certainly annoying). Ugh.
Update: I couldn’t stand the beeping anymore, and shut off the computer before the six beeps and before the floppy drive light shut off. Changed the jumper back, and upon reboot, found everything as I had left it.
Saw some resources that would suggest that a parity error would either be a problem with memory or the motherboard. Reseated the memory.
Reinstalled the second HD as the only harddrive, booted to the Win 98 disk, ran FDISK and deleted the existing NTFS partition (I had previously copied the data elsewhere). Formatted a new partition in FAT32. Started the Win98 installation CD, and successfully installed Win98. Who’d a thunk it?
I then tried to load the Win2K CD, choose the clean install option, and the system hung on the hardware inspection.
So, I am concluding that the problem is that the new BIOS has some conflict with Win2K, that Win98 just doesn’t care about. The system seems to be operating just fine under Win98.
I would like the system to run Win2K, and I think my only chance may be if I could revert back to the previous BIOS version. So, I would still be interested if anyone can suggest where I might find it.
Thanks to all who contributed.
Lesson: If you have some minor computer problem, and it looks like it can be solved through a low level upgrade - proceed with extreme caution! (or better, just don’t do it).