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BIOS Stop after Reading CMOS

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by inmoncolley 1 view

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Background: CPU running on W98SE With 2 drives - 1 8.4G (Seagate) (Primary w/W98SE); 1 - 80G (WD) set for 2 partitions to use for the dual boot setup. During W2K install, formated as NTFS and continue to load OS. System went to "restart" on W2K install. Now the BIOS (Award BIOS 4.51) get as far as reading the CMOS - CPU recognized, memory counted, identifies both hard drives and CDROM - then STOPS.
1. Removed 80G. System boots normal to desktop with 8.4G drive. Re-attach 80G and BIOS stop as before.
2. Removed 8.4G. Attached 80G as master. System boots to last CMOS reading (CDROM) and stops - ALL functions (i.e.) "Delete" (access to BIOS); C-A-Del for restart) FROZEN.
3. Can't boot to anything since BIOS don't completely load.
Can someone get me to the HD so I can reformat it?

6 replies

by oh smeg

As IDE Drives do have a BIOS Limit that can not be exceeded and still work.

If the original HDD was 8.4 GIG 80 sounds way too large for the BIOS to actually read hence the problem that you are facing here.

If you need to use a drive this big then you need to use a PCI IDE Controller Card that can support a 80 GIG or Larger IDE HDD. These have their own BIOS on them and override the System BIOS as they do not allow the HDD to be directly connected to the M'Board.

Alternatively you could try Seagate's Disc Wizard

http://tinyurl.com/27y63t

and try to fool the M'Boards BIOS but I'm not sure that this will actually work with hardware this old or a IDE HDD this big. It's much easier to fit a PCI to IDE Controller Card if you have spare PCI Slots available.

There where ISA IDE Controller Cards available once but they where limited to smaller IDE HDD so I don't think that will be a solution and besides you can not buy them new anymore.

if you just need to format the 80 GIG HDD fit it to a USB Caddy and install the Win 98SE USB Driver you can then access the HDD through the Drive Management Window and format it from there.

Col

by older mycroft

I have a nasty feeling that Win98SE won't be too happy with an NTFS drive attached.

Since you were intending to double-partition the 80GB drive you really should have kept the drive formatted to FAT32, that way Win98 would've been able to make use of it too.

As it stands, [i]and I may be wrong here[/i], your 8.4GB drive still retains your boot files no matter which OS you choose to boot into.

I think you would be best to remove the 8.4GB drive completely for the moment, connect the 80GB drive as the master drive, then boot from the W2K install disc and elect to re-format.

Format to FAT32, double-partition, then start again with both drives in their original positions.

by mjd420nova

You could check with the mfgr of the MOBO to see if there are any upgrades for the BIOS that might allow you to see the larger hard drive. The BIOS stopped whill it tried to determine the parameters of the drive. It could take it ten to fifteen minutes to check it out and eventually return an error when it can't decipher the parameters passed to it by the drive. You could also enter the drive type and parameters if you know them directly into the BIOS. The NTFS format may be the biggest part of the unit being unable to see the drive too. Old Mycroft has the right idea of booting to the CD with only the 80GB attached and reformat to FAT32 and set up the partitions then too, then switch back to the 8GB drive to boot and continue from there.

by Former member

When I try to partition a drive that is larger than 8.4 Gbytes with FAT32, the maximum partition size offered is still 8.4 Gbytes.

This can occur if the hard disc controller does not fully support interrupt 13 extensions. In order for a hard disc that is larger than 8.4 Gbytes to be fully addressed, system BIOS and the operating system must support interrupt 13 extensions. The file IO.SYS tests for the presence of interrupt 13 extensions and if they are not found, uses the default CHS LBA limit of 8.4 Gbytes. This information applies to both ATA and SCSI hard disc drives. Contact the drive controller manufacturer for information about a possible BIOS upgrade to a version of the BIOS that fully supports interrupt 13 extensions.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.
If this information is useful, please mark as helpful. Thanks.

by inmoncolley

Thanks to all who've responded.
For info: CPU is 400Mhz Celeron w/Intel 440BX PPFG Rev 3 MB (Although I've yet to find the exact product at Intel's site)and Award BIOS Ver 4.51 PG.

HD back online. Short version: Set HD to "Cable Select"; Reset CMOS; Although BIOS read drive as "none", Western Digital (WDC) Software did. Reset MBR and ODO Overlay; Re-pinned drive back to "Alternate Setting" as Master; CPU and BIOS now reads.

Follow on: Repartitioned drive into 3 FAT32 partitions using updated FDISK & formatted. Reloaded Win98SE which works fine. However, W2K reads ALL partition (including the first partition actually running 98SE) as "Unformatted or Damaged". If I try to format it using W2K it gets to 99% and then errors to "Unable to Format..." According to MS Article 241389, the drive has too many "hard-linked" partition tables. At least that's my interpretation. I've partitioned this drive several times using WDC software, FDISK (upgraded) and a Partition Manager. Somewhere along the way the partition table sector has gotten corrupted beyond effective use.
My approach now is to use WDC software and re-write the drive with "zeros" then start over. I've a question in to WDC about this.
Also, as it seems, according to my research, I can only make each partition no more that 32Gb.

Objective: Install Win98SE, W2K and WinXP_Pro on the same drive.
I've had Win98SE and W2k working on a 8.4Gb Seagate drive, each in it's own partition; had WinXP Pro on this 80Gb (WDC) (all with FAT32); XP worked great as a stand alone but everything starting down hill when I tried fix the Boot.ini file to recognize all 3 OS's.
As for the CPU, it had no problem with either HD or OS.
Again, thanks for the suggestions. As you can tell, I'm a novice. I would like to get this unit working before moving on to a 'better' unit and really destroying it. Thanks!

inmoncolley

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