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  • #2323104

    boot error acfg 8603fff

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    by unclegarbage ·

    Im working on parkard bell computer, older model, i have put in a new harddrive with win98, the old OS was win95 and split into two harddrives, (not sure how?) anyways after puting in the new hard drive, it will not boot, getting ACFG error 8603fff,it wants to run set up in cmos and i have no clue to what it is wanting me to do, any help with be great. need any futher information just post it and i will explain futher in detail.

    jumppers are set right ide cables are set right.

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    • #3405701

      boot error acfg 8603fff

      by timthetoolman ·

      In reply to boot error acfg 8603fff

      Hi,

      I think the clue of Win95 being mysteriously split over two disks is the key. At a guess I’d say the BIOS had a specific version to allow it to do this.

      Now you dont have that setup and I’d say you’re going to need to locate the “normal” version of the ACFG bios and flash it.

      Of course to do that, you going to need to know the model of the motherboard…

      Cheers,
      Tim.

      • #3407311

        boot error acfg 8603fff

        by unclegarbage ·

        In reply to boot error acfg 8603fff

        This did help out, i had a feeling this would be the deal, i did check out the BIOS up-date and in order to get it for this board it will cost $30.00, so I put the old HDD(s) back into the computer and got it going normal again and made the suggestion of buying something new. Thank you so much for the input, because I needed it to support what I was telling my friend. Just for fun I will let you all know what kind of computer it was. It was a 486sx running at only 50mhz and only had 20mb of RAM. I’m using a PIII @600mhz and I think its out of date, but my friend thinks it is the best thing since sliced bread. :)thank you again,,,, all of you.

    • #3405664

      boot error acfg 8603fff

      by thechas ·

      In reply to boot error acfg 8603fff

      The drive is larger than the BIOS can deal with.

      You have 3 options;

      1. Use the drive overlay program provided by the drive mfg.
      2. Install a secondary IDE controller card ($30)
      3. Upgrade to a newer motherboard ($20 – 200)

      Also, for most versions of W95, you are limited to 2GB per drive.
      So, a 20GB drive would need to be partitioned into 10! drives!
      For information on partitioning, check out http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk

      Windows 95 version 2.5 “C” and Windows 98 have FAT 32 which supports larger drives.
      I would set partition sizes for W98 no larger than 32GB to avoid a few bugs that can crop up.
      Check out the partitioning article at http://www.aumha.org

      It may be that the BIOS settings were hard set to the old drive, and you need to set the drive detection to auto detect, or use the drive detection option.

      Chas

    • #3407310

      boot error acfg 8603fff

      by unclegarbage ·

      In reply to boot error acfg 8603fff

      This question was closed by the author

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