Invalid media Type

[DonLogan]

Running W98. Have two disks, c: & d:
D is a 200gig, one partition, data drive. Left a program copying data
to d: overnight. This morning it said disk full, make some space.
Explorer saw d: but wouldn't give me any directory structure.
Looked at d:, over the network, from another machine & same thing.
Rebooted & I'm getting "Error 1 loading OS. May be due to a virus."
Then 4 options. Turned off virus check in bios & same thing. (think
this is some old disk >137 thing left over - will check later)

So booted from CD & get "invalid media type reading drive d. abort
retry fail"
Guess I have partition corruption? Any free utility to clean this up?
thanks

 

[Rod Speed]

Running W98. Have two disks, c: & d:
D is a 200gig, one partition, data drive. Left a program copying data
to d: overnight. This morning it said disk full, make some space.
Explorer saw d: but wouldn't give me any directory structure.
Looked at d:, over the network, from another machine & same thing.
Rebooted & I'm getting "Error 1 loading OS. May be due to a virus."
Then 4 options. Turned off virus check in bios & same thing. (think
this is some old disk >137 thing left over - will check later)

So booted from CD & get "invalid media type reading drive d. abort retry fail"
Guess I have partition corruption?

Yep, looks like you have got fanged by lack of support for drives
over 137GB, the copy wrapped over the front of the drive when
it got past the 137GB level and corrupted the partition.

Any free utility to clean this up?

You need more than that, you need to fix the 137G problem.

Not a trivial thing to do with W98.
http://www.48bitlba.com/index.htm
http://www.48bitlba.com/win98.htm

Why arent you running XP ? Its a lot easier to support drives over 137G.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Yep, looks like you have got fanged by lack of support for drives
over 137GB, the copy wrapped over the front of the drive when
it got past the 137GB level and corrupted the partition.

So please tell us, Roddles, how does a system that doesn't have support
for drives over 137GB know that the drive is over 137GB -without using
support for drives over 137GB- in order to even be able to try writing
over the 137GB mark?

 

[Rod Speed]

So please tell us, Roddles, how does a system that doesn't have
support for drives over 137GB know that the drive is over 137GB
-without using support for drives over 137GB- in order to even be
able to try writing over the 137GB mark?

Even a cretin such as yourself should be able to work out how
to produce a 200G partition on a drive in a system which doesnt
support drives over 137G, if someone was actually stupid enough
to lend you a seeing eye dog and a white cane.

 

[DonLogan]

Yep, looks like you have got fanged by lack of support for drives
over 137GB, the copy wrapped over the front of the drive when
it got past the 137GB level and corrupted the partition.

Sounds plausible, but i think the wrap occured past the 137 level. I'm
sure i had about 160gigs used when I started. So when it got to 200 it
wigged out?

??

You need more than that, you need to fix the 137G problem.

My mb BIOS supports 48lba. Just to be sure I loaded the Intel
Accelerator drivers (again?).

Not a trivial thing to do with W98.
http://www.48bitlba.com/index.htm
http://www.48bitlba.com/win98.htm

Why arent you running XP ? Its a lot easier to support drives over 137G.

Just trying to use an old OS, on a utiility machine, to save $.

Any util to check the drive before I reformat?

thanks

 

[Rod Speed]

Sounds plausible, but i think the wrap occured past the 137 level.
I'm sure i had about 160gigs used when I started. So when it got
to 200 it wigged out?

Writing past the 137G level doesnt necessarily stomp on the
first physical sector on the drive, where the partition table is.

So you dont necessarily see the invalid media type for a while.

??

If it has wrapped, its not trivial to clean the results of that up.

If you were just copying, its much safer
to fix the wrap and then copy again.

My mb BIOS supports 48lba. Just to be sure
I loaded the Intel Accelerator drivers (again?).

Sure, but Win98 doesnt support 48lba.

Just trying to use an old OS, on a utiility machine, to save $.

Thats dangerous given that problems with 48lba support in Win98.

Any util to check the drive before I reformat?

Check what ? A reformat will fix any problem.

 

[DonLogan]

Writing past the 137G level doesnt necessarily stomp on the
first physical sector on the drive, where the partition table is.

So you dont necessarily see the invalid media type for a while.



If it has wrapped, its not trivial to clean the results of that up.

If you were just copying, its much safer
to fix the wrap and then copy again.



Sure, but Win98 doesnt support 48lba.



Thats dangerous given that problems with 48lba support in Win98.


Check what ? A reformat will fix any problem.

A check that will let me determine whether
1.) should spend money to recouver, or
2.) spend money to reload
And yeh format is part of that.
You think dynamite is the only answer? (#2)

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Sounds plausible,

Yep, 'Sounds'. Except that you know better.

but i think the wrap occured past the 137 level.

I'm sure i had about 160gigs used when I started.
See.

So when it got to 200 it wigged out?

With 60GB wiped out already below the 137GB mark without you even noticing?
Missing out on the partition table, partition bootblock the FATs and the directories?
Yeah right.
Far too much coincidence there to miss overwriting those and not notice anything.

Roddles is blowing smoke up your ass, 'as always'.

Try Zvi Netiv's R e s Q d i s k .

 

[Rod Speed]

A check that will let me determine whether
1.) should spend money to recouver, or
2.) spend money to reload
And yeh format is part of that.
You think dynamite is the only answer? (#2)

I dont know of any decent free one. I like
Easy Recovery Pro myself, but it isnt free.

 

[Rod Speed]

Yep, 'Sounds'. Except that you know better.

With 60GB wiped out already below the 137GB mark without you even noticing?

The copy was done overnight, ****wit.

Missing out on the partition table, partition
bootblock the FATs and the directories?
Yeah right.
Far too much coincidence there to miss
overwriting those and not notice anything.

The copy was done overnight, ****wit.

Roddles is blowing smoke up your ass, 'as always'.

We'll see...

 

[Zvi Netiv]

Running W98. Have two disks, c: & d:
D is a 200gig, one partition, data drive. Left a program copying data
to d: overnight. This morning it said disk full, make some space.
Explorer saw d: but wouldn't give me any directory structure.
Looked at d:, over the network, from another machine & same thing.
Rebooted & I'm getting "Error 1 loading OS. May be due to a virus."
Then 4 options. Turned off virus check in bios & same thing. (think
this is some old disk >137 thing left over - will check later)

The "invalid media type" error message indicates corruption of the BPB (BIOS
boot block, found in the extended BOOT SECTOR (usually sectors 63 to 68) and
usually not the partition table. Yet there is a possibility that an erratic
write to the MBR wrote to the partition table and the pointer to the boot sector
is pointing elsewhere, which results in the same "invalid media type" message.
I have seen both errors to occur on drive I fixed. A boot virus is also a
possibility, although remote (boot viruses do not exist anymore in the wild, and
the only possibility to catch one now is by attempting to boot of an infected
very old floppy).

So booted from CD & get "invalid media type reading drive d. abort
retry fail"
Guess I have partition corruption? Any free utility to clean this up?
thanks

Try RESQDISK (see my signature) to assess the problem.

Before fixing the wrong thing you need first to resolve which of the above is
the cause to the problem.

Regards, Zvi

 

[DonLogan]

Running W98. Have two disks, c: & d:
D is a 200gig, one partition, data drive. Left a program copying data
to d: overnight. This morning it said disk full, make some space.
Explorer saw d: but wouldn't give me any directory structure.
Looked at d:, over the network, from another machine & same thing.
Rebooted & I'm getting "Error 1 loading OS. May be due to a virus."
Then 4 options. Turned off virus check in bios & same thing. (think
this is some old disk >137 thing left over - will check later)

So booted from CD & get "invalid media type reading drive d. abort
retry fail"
Guess I have partition corruption? Any free utility to clean this up?
thanks

Well I guess the best (only) recommended forensic tool is "resqdisk".

While researching I saw that Stefan (sept 04) took a beating over a
badly formatted resqudiskb report, ut he did produce a full report!
And now I have a follow-up from Zvi Netiv too!

If I disconnected d everything okeydokey. Plug in d and get the "error
1 reloading.....). This machine doesn't have an a drive that works.
And this morning this machine wouldn't boot!
Replaced power supply and now ok. (but machine was up & running fine
when I found it that morning!)
Found a new "a" and replaced.
Updated bios to latest (even though Asus said mine was ok)
Did the resqdisk disk thing. Not intuitive! Could only get a 1 page
printout. Stefan (sept 04) did much better. Didn't want to scrounge
too much time from Netiv so thought easier to start again, in this
case. so..
Bullet time, using dos (because windows won't boot when d plugged in).
Downloaded seagate utils. It wanted to set up & format drive as <137.
I said ok. Still got "error 1"
Found you can override <137 & did again. Still "error 1"
Decided to use 1999 fdisk & format (!!) Still got "error 1"
Thought it might be some shitware (ddm?) on my boot 80gig!
Not so. So I remembered Netiv mentioning 63-68. And it doesn't look
like format & fdisk wrote there. So used the seagate util to zero fill
(fast , but was prepared to run full) & then their format.
AND NOW OK
(for you rod)

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Well I guess the best (only) recommended forensic tool is "resqdisk".

While researching I saw that Stefan (sept 04) took a beating over a
badly formatted resqudisk report, but he did produce a full report!

And now I have a follow-up from Zvi Netiv too!

Wow. Make sure you get his autograph too.

If I disconnected d everything okeydokey. Plug in d and get the "error
1 reloading.....).

This machine doesn't have an a drive that works.

But the rest is rock solid, right?

And this morning this machine wouldn't boot!

Minor detail.

Replaced power supply and now ok. (but machine was up & running fine
when I found it that morning!)

Yes, obviously nothing to do with your problems.
Obviously it was the 137GB Windows bug, as Rod said.

Found a new "a" and replaced.
Updated bios to latest (even though Asus said mine was ok)
Did the resqdisk disk thing. Not intuitive!

Could only get a 1 page printout.

Yeah, that must be real bad, that really goes without saying.
A single page printout obviously can't solve the problem.

Stefan (sept 04) did much better. Didn't want to scrounge too much
time from Netiv so thought easier to start again, in this case. so..

So you wouldn't get an ear full from Netiv?
You probably still will for not trying.

Bullet time, using dos (because windows won't boot when d plugged in).
Downloaded seagate utils.

It wanted to set up & format drive as <137.

So likely it thinks the bios doesn't support 48-bit LBA.
Either that or it is plain stupid.

I said ok. Still got "error 1"
Found you can override <137 & did again.

Still "error 1"
Decided to use 1999 fdisk & format (!!) Still got "error 1"

Thought it might be some shitware (ddm?) on my boot 80gig!

Not so.

You sure?
This is absolutely weird behaviour, not observed with standard bootloaders.

So I remembered Netiv mentioning 63-68.

And it doesn't look like format & fdisk wrote there.

Fdisk doesn't (except maybe an occasional F6), but Format certainly does.

So used the seagate util to zero fill (fast, but was prepared to run full)
& then their format.

AND NOW OK

Now OK what?
Putting nothing but an empty formatted partition on the extra drive solved
the "Error 1 loading OS" error on the boot drive?

(for you rod)

Yeah, thanks 'rod', for mentioning the Resqdisk program to him.
You were such a big help.