Problem with spare HD installation-Win98

[nearly blind]

Win98 (not SE)
Spare 2GB IDE HD.

I have an existing HD partitioned into 3 drives
C,D,E, plus a CD drive (D).
I added a new HD. If I boot from a floppy into DOS I
CAN acess all my old drives and CD plus the new drive fine (C,D,E,F,G,H, where
the extra G is the DOS ram DISK that the floppy based DOS creates).
If I try to boot Windows 98 the start up fails.

If I boot in "Safe Mode" Win 98 comes up, but if I look at my disks in explorer
I see:
C: 1st partition of old HD
D: New HD (2 GB)
E: 2nd partition of old HD
F: 3rd parititon of old HD

The CD Rom doesn't show up <--- BAD.

I also tried installing a 2nd CDR ROM drive instead of the new HD.
That works fine. I can see all 5 disks in windows 98.

What's going on? When I install the 2nd CDR (and it works) it shows up
after after the HD partitions, is this related to the problem?

Why does the new HD show up as D:, in between the 1st HD's partition
grouping?

 

[Rod Speed]

Win98 (not SE)
Spare 2GB IDE HD.

I have an existing HD partitioned into
3 drives C,D,E, plus a CD drive (D).

Presumably that last (D) is a typo.

I added a new HD. If I boot from a floppy into DOS
I CAN acess all my old drives and CD plus the new
drive fine (C,D,E,F,G,H, where the extra G is the
DOS ram DISK that the floppy based DOS creates).

If I try to boot Windows 98 the start up fails.

If I boot in "Safe Mode" Win 98 comes up,
but if I look at my disks in explorer I see:
C: 1st partition of old HD
D: New HD (2 GB)
E: 2nd partition of old HD
F: 3rd parititon of old HD

The CD Rom doesn't show up <--- BAD.

I also tried installing a 2nd CDR ROM drive instead of the
new HD. That works fine. I can see all 5 disks in windows 98.

What's going on?

What have you done about the jumpering of the drives ?

Looks like you have an illegal jumper config that
works in a few configs like dos but not in Win98.

Win98 does its own scan for drives, quite apart from what
the scan done by the bios sees and its likely an illegal config
is producing that different result in Win98 and dos.

That would explain why adding a second
CDR works fine, its jumpered properly for
that drive config and the 2GB hard drive isnt.

What have you done about the drive type settings in the bios ?

When I install the 2nd CDR (and it works) it shows up
after after the HD partitions, is this related to the problem?

No, thats normal, for the optical drives to
get letters after the hard drive partitions.

Why does the new HD show up as D:, in
between the 1st HD's partition grouping?

Win9x allocates letters to primary dos partitions first,
and from the boot drive first. Then it allocates letters
to the logical drives in extended dos partitions after that.
Again in the sequence of the physical boot drive first.

The 2GB drive has a primary dos partition on it.

 

[nearly blind]

Actually it is Win 98 SE.

 

[nearly blind]

Thanks,

Yes the 2G new drive has bootable dos/windows on it.

I tried experimenting with the drive settings (jumpers).

-I tried:
- old drive new drive
A. jumper-master jumper slave
B. jumper-slave jumper master

When I tried B. Win98, which booted from the new 2G disk,
also did not come up correctly.

My bios seems to boot from the HD master. The master/slave
indications in the bios setup screen match my jumper settings.

Is the problem just related to having 2 HD's with
boot partitions?

 

[Rod Speed]

Thanks,

Yes the 2G new drive has bootable dos/windows on it.

I tried experimenting with the drive settings (jumpers).

-I tried:
- old drive new drive
A. jumper-master jumper slave
B. jumper-slave jumper master

When I tried B. Win98, which booted from the new 2G disk,
also did not come up correctly.

Does the new drive come up correctly when its the only drive ?
Its possible that it just hasnt been setup correctly in the sense
of the files on the drive etc. You do realise that just because
it boots in a different system doesnt necessarily mean it will
boot Win98 properly when its put into a different system dont you ?

My bios seems to boot from the HD master.

Thats pretty typical with an older bios. The later
bios give rather more control over what it boots.

The master/slave indications in the bios
setup screen match my jumper settings.

Is the problem just related to having 2 HD's with boot partitions?

Nope, thats fine and is what I normally do when installing
a new larger boot drive. I usually leave the previous drive
in the system with Win9x or ME, do a clean install on the
new drive, then have both drives in the system for the
convenient copying of the various data files and settings.

Most likely you just havent got Win98 installed properly on
the new drive and thats why config B doesnt boot properly.