Why cant I see directories?

[My father's son]

Just changed the single hard rive on a Dell Dimension to a (different)
master on one IDE chain and a slave on the IDE cord with the CD ROM on it
(is this the wrong way of doing things?) , - with the master having the OS
on it and the slave having the swap file. The computer worked fine with the
original HDD and booted very quickly and got into Windows 95 or 8 very
quickly indeed

All is seen on POST except that the computer takes an age auto-recognising
the drives (do I actually NEED to set the heads, sectors and cylinders etc
to get it to work as fast as with the original drive?).

Then it can't boot.

So I boot off a floppy and all I can see on the OS drive are the files: No
directories whatsoever???

What would stop me from seeing directories? Is it some characteristic of the
boot disc which I got off bootdisc .com? Or the drive? I somehow can't
believe that a HDD would go wrong in such a way that it can see files but
not directories?

MFS

 

[Rod Speed]

Just changed the single hard rive on a Dell Dimension
to a (different)> master on one IDE chain and a slave
on the IDE cord with the CD ROM on it
(is this the wrong way of doing things?) ,

Not clear what the two configs were, try saying it again.

Should be fine tho, almost any config should be fine as
long as you do have the master/slave jumpering right.
Looks like you dont have that tho now, the right jumpering.

- with the master having the OS on
it and the slave having the swap file.

The computer worked fine with the original
HDD and booted very quickly and got into
Windows 95 or 8 very quickly indeed

All is seen on POST except that the computer
takes an age auto-recognising the drives

Thats usually an indication that you dont have
the master/slave jumpering right, that long time.

(do I actually NEED to set the heads, sectors and cylinders
etc to get it to work as fast as with the original drive?).

The normal thing today is to use the AUTO
drive type or AUTO AUTO in an older system.

If you have different CHS values for the drive to
what it was used with in the original config, that
could well produce the symptoms you are seeing.

Then it can't boot.

Likely because it cants see the data
on the drive properly anymore.

So I boot off a floppy and all I can see on the
OS drive are the files: No directories whatsoever???

Thats likely because different CHS values are now being used.

What would stop me from seeing directories?

Likely because different CHS values are being used.

Is it some characteristic of the boot
disc which I got off bootdisc .com?
Nope.

Or the drive?

The drive type values most likely.

I somehow can't believe that a HDD would go wrong
in such a way that it can see files but not directories?

You can get a result like that if different CHS values are
now being used. Shouldnt happen if you had AUTO in the
original config and are still using that now, tho its possible
you might get some weird effects which produce something
like that with say two masters on the one ribbon cable etc.

Go back to basics, put the drives back in the original config
and see if it will still boot in that config. Check what drive
type setting was being used in the original config. It they
arent AUTO, try setting them to AUTO and see if it will
still boot in the original config. Check that the drives on
each ribbon cable only have one master and one slave.
If it doesnt work with AUTO, just use the settings from
the original config in the new config, with those settings
obviously moving to different drive table entrys because
you have moved the drives around on the ribbon cables.

 

[My father's son]

Thanks Rod, I think you have put your finger on it and I will check:
Although still set to AUTO, it seems to me that the auto on the OS drive
still has the CHS entries of the old drive set in it: (I cheekced it but
didnt change anything) I will put both drives on the same IDE wire and set
the values myself

 

[My father's son]

Rod

That didnt work: THe computer auto recognised the drives with the ocrrect
values and my not letting it auto-recognise by setting the USER preferences
at the CHS didnt improve much. The whole thing POSTs incredibly slowly and
still doesnt see any directories with the WD master 0 1.8 gig and NEC cable
select 2.11 gig hard drives instead of the original single IBM one

MFS

 

[Rod Speed]

That didnt work: THe computer auto recognised the drives
with the ocrrect values and my not letting it auto-recognise by
setting the USER preferences at the CHS didnt improve much.

Yeah, the AUTO drive type has no effect on
the speed at which drives are enumerated.

The whole thing POSTs incredibly slowly

Do you really mean the POST in the sense that even the
memory check is incredibly slow, or do you actually mean
that it takes a long time to work out what drives are present ?

That last is more commonly due to a problem with the drive
jumpering, usually seen when the drives arent jumpered
properly with just one master and one slave per cable,
or with cable select and a cable select cable.

Tho you can sometimes see a particular pair of
drives not liking to coexist on a single ribbon cable
and that being visible with a noticeable pause as
it works out what drives are on each cable.

and still doesnt see any directories with the WD
master 0 1.8 gig and NEC cable select 2.11 gig
hard drives instead of the original single IBM one

You may well have ****ed up the directory structure on
the drive where you cant see any directorys by writing
to it with different geometry to what it was used with. Any
attempt to boot off a Win boot drive will write to that drive.

And you dont say what happens if you go back to the
original config again. If that has the very slow boot now,
you've either managed to bugger up the contents of the
boot drive by booting off it with different drive type
settings than it originally had, or you have managed
to bugger up the ribbon cable in the process of
moving drives between ribbon cables.

I'd go back to the original config and run the hard drive
manufacturers diagnostic on the boot drive. It will now
report errors if you've stuffed something, and if it says
the drive is fine, you've likely just scrambled the data
on the drive and need to start over from scratch using
AUTO drive types exclusively and doing a format and
clean reinstall of Win95 again.

 

[My father's son]

Things seem to be improving somewhat after your messages which are
incredibly helpful: Many thanks

I have System Commander installed and suddenly the whole thing can see
everything on the drives except things like io.sys off which it boots.

So I can get SC to identify that windows 98 is there but as soon as it
starts to boot off it, I get a 'bootable media not found message'. I should
probably try to see how I can boot off an SC boot floppy and see if it is
possible to correct this problem

And you were right on the POST question. It identifies the BIOS and counts
memory very quickly THEN it does something very slowly indeed. Apparently
then it sees and identifies the hard drives very quickly (probably because I
told it what CHS was there).

But there may well be a problem with the jumpers on the drives although I
seem to remember that they were working fine when I took the drives out of
the computer where they were so they should work properly in their present
computer with the same jumper settings? When that didnt prove true, I tried
using master on the master drive and cable select on the swapfile drive
(because there is no instruction for setting this drive as a slave for some
reason I can't really understand:I am not using any particularly selectable
cable)

 

[Rod Speed]

Things seem to be improving somewhat after your
messages which are incredibly helpful: Many thanks

I have System Commander installed and suddenly the whole thing can
see everything on the drives except things like io.sys off which it boots.

So I can get SC to identify that windows 98 is there but as soon as
it starts to boot off it, I get a 'bootable media not found message'.
I should probably try to see how I can boot off an SC boot floppy
and see if it is possible to correct this problem

And you were right on the POST question. It identifies the BIOS and
counts memory very quickly THEN it does something very slowly indeed.

Thats odd. Maybe whats happening is that the drive jumpering
is wrong and that thats whats causeing that big pause.

Apparently then it sees and identifies the hard drives very
quickly (probably because I told it what CHS was there).

But there may well be a problem with the jumpers on the drives although I
seem to remember that they were working fine when I took the drives out of
the computer where they were so they should work properly in their present
computer with the same jumper settings?

The jumper settings have to be correct for the PARTICULAR
combination of drives on a PARTICULAR ribbon cable. You
have to have just one master and just one slave on each cable.

When that didnt prove true, I tried using master on the master
drive and cable select on the swapfile drive (because there is
no instruction for setting this drive as a slave for some reason
I can't really understand:

There must be. You must be misreading the label.
Check the web site for that particular drive. The web
site usually spells out the jumpering more clearly,
just because there isnt that much room on the label.

I am not using any particularly selectable cable)

A cable select cable usually has different
colored connectors for each connector.

 

[My father's son]

ROD SAID That last is more commonly due to a problem with the drive
jumpering, usually seen when the drives arent jumpered
properly with just one master and one slave per cable,
or with cable select and a cable select cable.


Rod, you were absolutely right: Although I havent tried it yet, I did
discover from the NEC site that this drive (besides being one of the only
drives I have seen without the relatively obvious jumper selections written
on itbesides being marked on the jumpers/switches) has totally non-obvious
selections. Basically there are 4 switches with the first (called MST) being
EITHER master if on OR slave if off!! In fact, slightly confusingly for a
drive with four switches, if you look at the other side of the switch, by
the next chip., it does suggest this.

The second is a cable select as suggested on it and the third and fourth are
factory selectable only (whatever that means, - probably that there is
nothing connected to them underneath?)

MFS

 

[Rod Speed]

ROD SAID

Rod, you were absolutely right: Although I havent tried it yet, I did
discover from the NEC site that this drive (besides being one of the only
drives I have seen without the relatively obvious jumper selections written
on itbesides being marked on the jumpers/switches) has totally non-obvious
selections. Basically there are 4 switches with the first (called MST) being
EITHER master if on OR slave if off!! In fact, slightly confusingly for a
drive with four switches, if you look at the other side of the switch, by
the next chip., it does suggest this.

The second is a cable select as suggested on it and the third
and fourth are factory selectable only (whatever that means,
- probably that there is nothing connected to them underneath?)

More commonly its used for a factory test.

 

[My father's son]

Hi again Rod

Well everything is working now on the DRIVE side as you suggested, or almost
everything: The system wont actually boot.

It does boot off a floppy and I can see all the directories but keep getting
the message insert bootable media or boot sector not found. IO.SYS and
MSDOS.SYS sseem to be therebut I still get this error message: Do you think
there are any utilities which might assist with this problem? (I tried
FDISK /MBR)

Or is there anything I might still have done wrong?

MFS