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#21
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On Sat, 28 May 2005 15:24:49 -0400, "Peter"
wrote: I found diskpart for Win2K and installed it. How do I use it to clear the Active bit? I couldn't find any manual anywhere. I am afraid that option won't work in Win2K version of Diskpart. Use WinXP Diskpart ver.5.1.3565; there is an INACTIVE command. Thanks for the heads up. I am using MBR Wizard - it works just fine for my purposes. -- Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank an American soldier. |
#22
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Bob wrote in message ... Rod Speed wrote Bob wrote Someone recommended a nifty utility called MBRWiz. I used the DOS version because I did not want my main boot disk in the machine. It worked just fine - now Windows doesn't go schitz on me. Here's the procedu 0) I removed all references to the driver for that disk in Win2K with Add/Remove Hardware, View Hidden. 1) I partitioned/formatted the disk with from DOS Western Digital DataLifeguard, which unfortunately sets the Active bit (really braindead for a major HD manufacturer). Stupid to continue to use it then when 2K can do what you want. You are the stupid one. Ad hominem and flagrant hypocrisy noted. Yet again. 2K can't do what I want. Lie. It partitions and formats drives fine. And doesnt set the active bit in an extra drive when its partitioned and formatted for data. It may do what you want, but then you are too stupid to realize that 2K or XP is not really doing what you think you want. How odd that they both do it fine for me. 2) I used MBRWizD to clear the Active bit. 3) I made sure the Award BIOS knew the correct hard disk to boot from (Advanced BIOS features). After preparing the disk with WD DLG, the BIOS prefers to boot from it. Bull****. You are the one who is full of bull****. Ad hominem and flagrant hypocrisy noted. Yet again. I know what my BIOS says. I doubt it. You cant even manage to work out that 2K handles two drives which both have an active partition fine. You cant even manage to work out that you did more than JUST toggle the active bit on one of the drives. It says that it wants to boot from the disk I just partitioned/formatted. More pig ignorant bull****. 4) I started Win2K which installed the proper driver because the Active bit was clear. There arent different drivers that depend on the active bit. You don't know what you are talking about. That particular pig ignorant claim of yours is completely trivial to prove is just plain wrong. 5) I rebooted Win2K to establish the new disk. No problems with shutdown, no STOP 0x9F POWER_FAILURE, no double disk icons, no ZIP Drive icon. That last stuff indicated you actually had a mangled 2K config that was the actual problem. Nothing to do with the active bit at all. As always you are again full of crap. Ad hominem and flagrant hypocrisy noted. Yet again. I fixed the problem by clearing the Active bit. Lying again. You clearly did a hell of a lot more than JUST toggling the active bit on one of the drives. Windows attached the proper driver There arent different drivers that depend on the active bit. and all is working as expected. You clearly did a hell of a lot more than JUST toggling the active bit on one of the drives. And carefully deleted all that from the quoting, I have restored it, so you can lie yet again. Windows is truly a stupid piece of **** not to be able to deal with 2 active HDs at the same time. Corse it can, I do it all the time, mainly because its the simplest way to handle a main boot drive failure, just select the other drive in the bios to boot from. You do stupid things all the time so I would not pay any attention much less give any credence to your stupid ways of dealing with computer problems. Ad hominem and flagrant hypocrisy and flagrant dishonesty noted. Yet again. Have you the remotest concept of how pathetic you look in the eyes of those who KNOW that they have used 2K fine with more than one drive with an active partition on it ? Obviously not, you presumably are actually that stupid. The only odd effect I have seen with one system that turned out to be an intermittent short to case with the motherboard You are over the top. Ad hominem and flagrant hypocrisy and flagrant dishonesty noted. Yet again. Don't be surprised if I ignore any posts from you. You have always been, and always will be completely and utterly irrelevant. What you might or might not claim to ignore in spades. We have seen you desperately attempt to lie your way out of your predicament time after time after time now. I don't have time to deal with someone who is obviously suffering from a psychosis. Any 2 year old could bull**** its way out of its predicament better than that pathetic effort. You're the rabid psychotic redneck, and everyone has noticed. |
#23
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"scratch space"? Which disk are you booting from if you
want to use that "scratch space" disk? I am booting from the Enermax disk. The one that was giving me trouble because the Active bit was set is in a Kingwin KF-23 removable bay. Is the "Enermax disk" the one which has OS and data to be backed up? Boot Win98SE, use FDISK to work with WD drive. I have a solution now with MBR Wizard. I know, you said that. But I'm trying to figure out why you can't boot Win98SE floppy and FDISK your WD Caviar drive. Somehow the Active bit stays set even when I delete the partition. That is weird. How many disks do you have in your system when you perform FDISK partition remove for WD? Only that disk. That might be the reason. Maybe with two disks you would be able to clear active partition flag on WD drive (second disk). To get this to work properly, I have to create the partition and do the format with WD DLG. Then I have to clear the Active bit with MBRWizd. Then I have to tell the BIOS what disk to use for booting. From there everything behaves normally. Quite elaborate process. Not really. I load DLG to do the partition/format. That's actually faster than loading PM8. I then load MBRWizd. You always have to check the BIOS if you have two disks or more. Most people don't because the BIOS has chosen their real boot disk. But somehow my BIOS picks the newly partitioned/formatted disk. Once I set the BIOS up properly I never have to fool with it until I present a new partitioned/formatted disk. Since I do not have all that many disks to play with, that will be very rare. Why do you have to use WD DLG to create partition and format WD disk? I can't get Windows to do it properly if the Active bit is set. PM8 has a problem with the Enermax sometimes. It's too flaky to rely on. With DLG I can get the job done with no muss, no fuss. I just have to clear the Active bit which entails a simple additional step. If you keep running Windows from your primary aka "Enermax disk" while doing this WD procedure, you potentially introducing system changes to your primary environment. That might be dangerous. I would try to avoid that as much as possible. That is why I suggested booting DOS, BartPE or Knoppix to perform disk operations on your "scratch disk". BTW, how do you do your backup? |
#24
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On Sat, 28 May 2005 18:39:03 -0400, "Peter"
wrote: Is the "Enermax disk" the one which has OS and data to be backed up? There is no backup operation involved in the problem I faced. However the answer to your question is that there are normally two disks in the Enermax unit. You can configure it two ways: RAID-1 or Backup. I use it only for backup. The source is cloned to the target inside the box - an operation that is essentially transparent to the operating system. Boot Win98SE, use FDISK to work with WD drive. I have a solution now with MBR Wizard. I know, you said that. But I'm trying to figure out why you can't boot Win98SE floppy and FDISK your WD Caviar drive. It's probably because I am so paranoid about using FDISK that I did not try out all the possibilities. It has been over 15 years since I used it, and it was braindead then. That might be the reason. Maybe with two disks you would be able to clear active partition flag on WD drive (second disk). I got adventurous (after making a clone backup) and tried to use FDISK with two disks in. But I could not figure out how to change the Active bit. If you keep running Windows from your primary aka "Enermax disk" while doing this WD procedure, you potentially introducing system changes to your primary environment. That might be dangerous. I would try to avoid that as much as possible. I boot to DOS while doing the DLG partition/format and the MBR Wizard. That is why I suggested booting DOS, BartPE or Knoppix to perform disk operations on your "scratch disk". BTW, how do you do your backup? The Enermax unit does it automatically in h/w. I set a scheduler and the unit takes over. After the backup is finished, the target is isolated from the circuits inside the Enermax until it is time for another backup. I can do as few as one backup per month at one specific time (top of any hour) or I can do it twice daily at the top of any two different hours. I could just as well do RAID-1 and pull one of the disks for a shelf archive. But that means I have to interact once per backup period. With the automated backup I can set it and forget it. I have it set for 4:00 am Daily. On Sunday when I do my major maintenance I will make the backup disk a weekly archive by putting it on the shelf and rotate the 3 disk set thru the machine. IOW the boot disk becomes the weekly archive, the backup becomes the boot disk and the week-old shelf archive becomes the backup disk. In addition I have a clone disk created with s/w in the Kingwin KF-23 mobile bay. That sits on the shelf for a monthly archive in case something major happens to the Enermax h/w. Then as mentioned I have an old small WD Caviar disk I keep in the Kingwin for scratch pad purposes. For example, if I accidentally deleted something from my boot disk, I can swap it with the last daily backup and copy the lost item to the scratch disk, then put the original boot disk back and cooy it from the scratch disk. If Enermax would make a mobile rack that accepted the RAID-1/Backup trays, then I could do that recovery in one step instead of the two required now. I have already let the Product Manager at EnermaxUSA know about this need for a static mobile bay. Enermax makes mobile bays and sells them to Kingwin (or maybe vice versa or there is a third party) because one of them is identical with the Kingwin. It's all one big happy family in Taiwan anyway. There are a couple of purposes behind doing backups this way instead of the conventional "ghost" method. 1) I want a h/w solution. I do not trust s/w, not after Power Quest routinely botched everything they ever made. Symantec did us all a favor putting them out of their misery. 2) I want an automated procedure, one that does not demand that I stop what I am doing and dedicate hours to what is basically one of the most boring tasks in computing. I'd rather watch grass grow or paint dry than watch Drive Image churn away making half-assed clones for hours. |
#25
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#26
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On Sun, 29 May 2005 01:42:50 GMT, kony wrote:
As someone has already pointed out, Win2k does not have any problems with multiple drives having active status (bit). Who said that? Ask him if he did the entire procedure as I did it, or he is just pontificating. I don't have a solution for you but do feel you're barking up the wrong tree here. I know what happened. 1) Remove the primary master boot disk. Don't confuse DLG about which disk to partition/format. 2) Install the other drive as secondary slave. 3) Partition/format the secondary slave disk with DataLifeguard. The Active bit will be set. 4) Install the primary master boot disk. 5) Make sure the BIOS doesn't try to boot off the secondary slave. 6) Start Win2K. It will tell you that you have a new device and to reboot. Do so. 7) You will get a STOP 0x9F POWER_FAILURE BSOD. Now start over but do things differently this time. 1) Remove the secondary slave disk. 2) Start Win\2K and remove the driver that was associated with the secondary slave disk. Start fresh. 3) Remove the primary master boot disk. Don't confuse DLG about which disk to partition/format. 3) Install the secondary slave disk. 4) Partition/format the secondary slave with DLG. 5) Use MBR WizD (DOS version) to clear the Active bit. 6) Install the primary master boot disk. 7) Make sure your BIOS doesn't try to boot off the secondary slave disk. 8) Start Win2K. It will tell you that you have a new device and to reboot. Do so. 9) Notice that you do not get any STOP BSOD. 10) Restart Win2K and notice that the secondary slave disk is properly mounted. That's how it happened. I don't care what anyone else says. I was the one doing this and I kept close track of each step. I can duplicate the entire procedure and have the same thing happen again. |
#27
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Bob wrote in message ... kony wrote As someone has already pointed out, Win2k does not have any problems with multiple drives having active status (bit). Who said that? Me. Ask him if he did the entire procedure as I did it, What you may or may not have done is completely irrelevant to whether 2K doesnt have a problem with more than one physical drive with an active partition on it. or he is just pontificating. Nope, like I said, its what I normally do when upgrading drives, have multiple physical drives with an active partition on it and have observed that 2K doesnt give a damn about that. I don't have a solution for you but do feel you're barking up the wrong tree here. I know what happened. But since you didnt actually try JUST toggling the active bit on just one of the physical drives AND DIDNT CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE AT THE SAME TIME, you have absolutely no basis what so ever for your pig ignorant claim that 2K cant handle more than one physical drive with an active partition on it. And many of us know damned well that 2K handles that fine. 1) Remove the primary master boot disk. Don't confuse DLG about which disk to partition/format. 2) Install the other drive as secondary slave. 3) Partition/format the secondary slave disk with DataLifeguard. The Active bit will be set. 4) Install the primary master boot disk. 5) Make sure the BIOS doesn't try to boot off the secondary slave. 6) Start Win2K. It will tell you that you have a new device and to reboot. Do so. 7) You will get a STOP 0x9F POWER_FAILURE BSOD. Now start over but do things differently this time. 1) Remove the secondary slave disk. 2) Start Win\2K and remove the driver that was associated with the secondary slave disk. Start fresh. 3) Remove the primary master boot disk. Don't confuse DLG about which disk to partition/format. 3) Install the secondary slave disk. 4) Partition/format the secondary slave with DLG. 5) Use MBR WizD (DOS version) to clear the Active bit. 6) Install the primary master boot disk. 7) Make sure your BIOS doesn't try to boot off the secondary slave disk. 8) Start Win2K. It will tell you that you have a new device and to reboot. Do so. 9) Notice that you do not get any STOP BSOD. 10) Restart Win2K and notice that the secondary slave disk is properly mounted. That's how it happened. All completely irrelevant to your stupid pig ignorant claim that 2K CANT HANDLE MORE THAN ONE PHYSICAL DRIVE WITH AN ACTIVE PARTITION ON IT. I don't care what anyone else says. I was the one doing this and I kept close track of each step. I can duplicate the entire procedure and have the same thing happen again. Easy to claim. Until you actually do that, WITH A CLEAN INSTALL OF 2K, YOU DONT EVEN KNOW THAT THAT PROBLEM WOULD SHOW UP AGAIN. Presumably you actually are so stupid that you cant manage to grasp the basics of what it takes to prove your pig ignorant assertion that 2K cant handle more than one physical drive with an active partition on it. You havent even eliminated the possibility that its something that DataLifeGuard does thats the problem. And even someone as stupid as you should be able to grasp that your pig ignorant assertion can be tested any time by just taking your working config AND JUST TOGGLING THE ACTIVE BIT ON AGAIN AND SEE IF 2K AGAIN HAS THE PROBLEM THAT YOU SAY. You're no rocket scientist, you clearly havent actually got a clue about the most basic concepts of rigorous testing. |
#28
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Bob wrote:
Partition Magic 8 is worthless for my system. I have two HD installed and both have the Active bit set. The BIOS is smart enough to know that and allows me to choose which one I want to boot from. Windows is not as smart - it issues a STOP0x9F POWER_FAILURE error when I shut down, presumably because it gets confused over two bootable disks. I do not need the Acxtive bit set on the second disk - it is left over from formatting it with Western Digital DataLifeguard formatter, which unfortunately assumes you are preparing the disk for installing Windows, so it sets the Active bit in advance and does not let you clear it. Bummer. Partition Magic 8 can't deal with two bootable disks either. More bummer. In the past there was always FDISK, but I haven't used that in over 10 years and would be concerned about using it in today's environment. Lord only knows what it would do to the partition table. So I need a utility that will let me clear the Active bit. Any recommendations? I'm late to the thread, but I did want to mention the easiest way I have ever found to clear an active bit: Download BootItNG from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com. You also need to download their free makedisk utility from the free utilities section. Put makedisk in the same folder as BING. Make either a bootable floppy or a bootable ISO. Boot to that disk. When the opening screen appears, hit cancel and then OK. That will put you into the maintenance mode. Click on Partition work. Select the second drive, probably HD1. Click on View MBR. To clear the Active bit, click on the partition, hold the LEFT shift key, and click Set Active. The bit will clear. I love the program. It's a free download and worth the time to try. |
#29
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On Sun, 29 May 2005 12:33:29 GMT, mcp6453
wrote: I'm late to the thread, but I did want to mention the easiest way I have ever found to clear an active bit: Download BootItNG from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com. You also need to download their free makedisk utility from the free utilities section. Put makedisk in the same folder as BING. Make either a bootable floppy or a bootable ISO. Boot to that disk. When the opening screen appears, hit cancel and then OK. That will put you into the maintenance mode. Click on Partition work. Select the second drive, probably HD1. Click on View MBR. To clear the Active bit, click on the partition, hold the LEFT shift key, and click Set Active. The bit will clear. I love the program. It's a free download and worth the time to try. Thanks for the recommendation. -- Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you are reading it in English, thank an American soldier. |
#30
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In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Bob wrote:
Partition Magic 8 is worthless for my system. I have two HD installed and both have the Active bit set. The BIOS is smart enough to know that and allows me to choose which one I want to boot from. Windows is not as smart - it issues a STOP0x9F POWER_FAILURE error when I shut down, presumably because it gets confused over two bootable disks. I do not need the Acxtive bit set on the second disk - it is left over from formatting it with Western Digital DataLifeguard formatter, which unfortunately assumes you are preparing the disk for installing Windows, so it sets the Active bit in advance and does not let you clear it. Bummer. Partition Magic 8 can't deal with two bootable disks either. More bummer. In the past there was always FDISK, but I haven't used that in over 10 years and would be concerned about using it in today's environment. Lord only knows what it would do to the partition table. So I need a utility that will let me clear the Active bit. Any recommendations? Use Linux fdisk if you don't trust MD fdisk. Comes e.g. on a Knoppix CD-only linux that will not touch your drives unless told to. I have never had it screw up anything. You can also try GNU parted which can fit on a bootable floppy. For both consult Google as to where get them. Arno |
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