Preserved Topic: Who remember DOS? (Page 1 of 1)

I have to make a booting disk to update my AMIBIOS, I make it from roght click on disk A and format, then choos 'make DOS disk'

When I boot from that disk, it does not recognize my HD, and I need my HD to make the operation (as describe here)

The problem, I think, is that my HD is lettered 'F' (dunno why!) and well, I remembered that in config.sys there was a line like 'drive=z' which specify how many letter is going to check for HD's.

Anybody remebers how was exactly that command line?

Or better yet, anybody knows how to get my HD to letter C? It's a amster, configured as master....

do you got your hd even you boot your
primary os?
Is your hd shown in the BIOS?

Get your Bootdisk here

cu
~Xdreamer.ch~
-------------------------------
to stupid for transparent sigs

Yes!! it's shown in the BIOS check!

The command is: lastdrive=z
But does not work, none of those booting disk work.....

I think I need to change the letter of the hard disk to C:\

ok, you won't get onto your Windows XP (NTFS) partition (part of hd) from DOS.
Just copy the files you're suposed to copy to c:\test onto the floppy.
then boot and call
"amifl827 a6380vms.330",
instead of going into c:\test first.
that should take care of your problem.

so long,
Tyberius Prime

[This message has been edited by Tyberius Prime (edited 06-11-2002).]

Tyb, I read in somwhere to do not do that from the floppy disk.....

But if you confirm, I'll proceed!!!!

wakky, I think the 'lastdrive' line only specifies how many drives you can have, not which one you're on...


Harmonizing new illusions...
ICQ: 67751342

Wakkos
Forget the last drive line, that's inconsequential.

The fact that your master drive is showing up as F
is weird but.....who gives a shit for now?

they want you to boot from DOS. From there you need to
get to a hard drive period...just make sure the BIOS upgrade
is on that drive...(i'm assuming the file will not fit on a floppy -
if it does fit on the floppy, then by all means run it from the floppy as
Tyberius posted.

i have no idea why you can't read your HDD from DOS.
do you have any Assign commands? I read the AMI page
and there is nothing special there...very standard flash upgrade

can you cut and paste your config.sys and autoexec.bat here?

p.s. how many drives do you have
the winblows conventions are that drives on the
master will be c: for primary partition, then d: e: f: etc.
if you have a slave, the slave will take the d:

UNLESS the slave drive is only an extended partition (that's what i do) - in
that case the drive will take the next available letter...but always before your
cd-rom....i know this sounds confusing...but you must have some mix up between
the slave (you do have a slave???) and the master....my slave is F:
how many partitions (logical drives rather) do you have?
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

sorry, just had to let a primal scream





[This message has been edited by ShootingStar (edited 06-11-2002).]

I did a quick googles group and could not find a single mention
of not finding a HDD from DOS (many hits for not finding a CD-ROM
as expected)

Unless your boot diskette is screwed up? I installed a new drive
two weeks ago, and at one point DOS would no longer show any
drives, only the A prompt....it was like OH F****..thank God
i backed up...but i rebooted and the drives were back...never
figured it out.

edit:
I think i understand what is happening. DOS is not seeing your
drive assigments the way Windows is. Do a DIR command
to determine if a drive is indeed your drive or if it is your CD-ROM
for example. try different letters until one makes sense. and then
make sure the bios upgrade is on that letter (as seen by DOS)
this is just a theory...but it does make sense if and only if you have 2 drives.



[This message has been edited by ShootingStar (edited 06-11-2002).]

I already tried all the lleters to find a HD, and nothing, not even the CD, sometimes when you DOS-boot and the CD is not there, changes the letter of the HD. I installed this hard disk some days ago, there was another, and there was 2 cd-rom drives, so I had c for the old HD, D for the CD-ROM reader, E for the CD-ROM burning and F for this new HD I'm using, wat I don't understand is WHY if I retired all the others drivers (even both CD ROM) it's still an F drive.. Shit.


The files fits on a floppy, I'm doing that from the floppy disk.....

okies here is a quick fix, try before flashing bios though!!!!!!!!!!!

boot pc and hit del key or whatever key ya need to hit to get into bios...

first of all i know it sounds dumb but make sure bios protect is off

then disable all drives bar ya windows drive ie ya boot HDD after copying the flash bios file to it..

this will then default ya boot drive to c: as there wont be any other drives around...

then goto ya boot order and check ya boot order is A: then C:

then do save settings and exit

reboot ya pc using ya boot disk the only drives ya pc will see are a: and ya hdd... (in theory ya could even disable ya c:drive aswell if no files are being written to it, as a bios flash only writes to the bios chip) check this in the readme file to see if it does back anyfiles up to the c drive

good luck

Wakkos
This is confusing.
What OS are you running. Is it XP?
Please note that XP and 98SE for example do NOT desigate drives the same way.
Also, XP allows you to reassign drive names, 98 does not (without weird tweaks)

What error do you get from DOS when you type C: for example?
Does it say Abort, Retry, Fail? Can you do a DIR from a:?

Is it reading the NTFS properly? are you NTFS? or FAT32?

If you run command from your OS, can you see your drives properly?

I have a feeling you boot diskette sucks. Take a look at the a drive
from Windows and see if the hidden system files and command.com are there.

sorry, i can't be more helpful.

I'm using Win XP, NTFS, when i boot from the diskette (made by format in win XP) i can make a dir form A:\ but if i try to change to C: or any other letter, there's an 'invalid drive' message........

If you know how to reassaign letter from XP, maybe I'll try that!

Wakkos, you can't access partitions which are formatted with the NTFS file system from a DOS boot disk (and that's what Windows XP created). And as far as I know, there's no way of creating an NTFS boot disk, I've never seen such a thing... If you really needed to access your NTFS disk from the floppy you'd have to put some special NTFS drivers on the boot floppy, but I don't think that's necessary.

In that BIOS update description you mentioned they tell you to go to C:\test only because you're supposed to save the BIOS update to your hdd. But since you can't easily access C: you should copy the files to the boot disk and install them from there. I can't imagine that this could cause any problems. Unless your floppy drive im- or explodes while reading the new files. That could cause some problems indeed

Oh my god, I just re-read this whole thread and noticed that TP already gave you exactly the same advice. But well, see it as a confirmation

kuckus (cell #282)

HUmmmm, explode eh? that would be funny!!!!!

Ok, I'm doing that from the floppy!!
If I don't come here in the next week, call my mother and tell her that I love her, that I never wanted to eat that cake she made for my dad.

Ok, now that you've confirmed it's NTFS Tyberius and Kuckus are dead right.
You can't read it.

2 more options if it makes it more confusing!
1) try to get a copy of NTFS-DOS
2) try to get copies of Windows 2K boot diskettes (set of 4)
not sure if 1) will work but 2) certainly will

but again, you should be able to run that file from anywhere no?

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/NTFSDOS.shtml

Yeah, NTFS-DOS would also work, but if there's enough space on the floppy I'd really just put the files on it and save a lot of hassle. I'm pretty sure that the file doesn't care where it's executed from.

kuckus (cell #282)

If you do decide to change drive letters in XP:

Right-click My Computer, Manage, Computer Management, Disk Management.
Right-click the drive, click Change Drive Letter and Paths.

actually this is cool little applet.