Author Topic: Corrupt partition 0 error when trying to install eCS 1.2R on real hardware  (Read 11971 times)

Jean-Yves

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Along with the Dell mini 1012 that I was given by my in-laws came a venerable Dell desktop (venerable indeed, it uses PS/2 keyboard and mouse!)

Spec wise I think it would suit eCS well (dual core Celeron, 2GB of RAM, 40GB hard drive), so I had a go at installing eCS 1.2R on that after cleaning out the internals of the copious cobwebs and dust.   It currently has XP on it and I ran a full checkdisk using that - all came back fine

However, when I get to the eCS Create Volume step in the setup, it keeps reporting a corrupt partition 0 and won't let me do any changes, i.e. I cannot create Boot Manager, cannot rewrite MBR, cannot add a new volume

I can boot back into XP and again no errors reported using checkdisk.

I had the same problem with an old Dell laptop a few months back - ran XP fine, Linux installed fine if sluggish, but eCS complained of an error in partition 0

Is this a known eCS 1.2R bug? Is it fixed in 2.1 or is there a way around it? Would a bootable DFSee be the way to go - is there some step I need to do to make a hard drive eCS friendly?  I don't recall any such thing when I last used eCS several years ago, but it could be that I've forgotten

Any advice gratefully received, otherwise Linux will be going on there instead!

PS - I don't get this error when installing under VirtualBox, it only seems to be with real hardware

Roderick Klein

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Along with the Dell mini 1012 that I was given by my in-laws came a venerable Dell desktop (venerable indeed, it uses PS/2 keyboard and mouse!)

Spec wise I think it would suit eCS well (dual core Celeron, 2GB of RAM, 40GB hard drive), so I had a go at installing eCS 1.2R on that after cleaning out the internals of the copious cobwebs and dust.   It currently has XP on it and I ran a full checkdisk using that - all came back fine

However, when I get to the eCS Create Volume step in the setup, it keeps reporting a corrupt partition 0 and won't let me do any changes, i.e. I cannot create Boot Manager, cannot rewrite MBR, cannot add a new volume

I can boot back into XP and again no errors reported using checkdisk.

I had the same problem with an old Dell laptop a few months back - ran XP fine, Linux installed fine if sluggish, but eCS complained of an error in partition 0

Is this a known eCS 1.2R bug? Is it fixed in 2.1 or is there a way around it? Would a bootable DFSee be the way to go - is there some step I need to do to make a hard drive eCS friendly?  I don't recall any such thing when I last used eCS several years ago, but it could be that I've forgotten

Any advice gratefully received, otherwise Linux will be going on there instead!

PS - I don't get this error when installing under VirtualBox, it only seems to be with real hardware

If you would have put the exact English error discription in google it might have already popped up.


    To work around this installation problem, download DFSee (available at http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee/download.php).

Get dfsos2.exe from the zip-file and put it on a USB-stick (FAT16) or on a floppy. Boot from the eComStation 1.2R CD-ROM and press Shift-F3 again to get a command prompt.

Start dfsos2.exe, press F10 and goto the menu option Mode=Fdisk.

Choose the menu option at the bottom:
  "Manage OS2 LVM information"

Then select:
  "Add default LVM-info (VCU)"

After having executed this command, DFSee will restart the system.

Boot from CD again and start minilvm to create your partitions.

This error occurs because VCU.exe from IBM is not run during installation. VCU is a utility to assign drive letters to all partitions. In some cases, running VCU under MCP1/MCP2 can lead to data loss. In eComStation 2.0 and above this problem is resolved with the installation CD. This checks the hard disc (if there are no problems) it reports in the text mode phase of the boot phase there are no errors or otherwhise offers to resolve the detected problem.

Jean-Yves

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Thanks Roderick

You are right, I should have googled the exact error message. I did do a search for the general error but as you can see from the title I could not remember the exact text.  :-[

Good to know that there are two options open to me (DFSee and eCS 2.x)

Thanks again for the very thorough walkthrough for the DFSee option.  Just one further question:
Quote
Boot from the eComStation 1.2R CD-ROM and press Shift-F3 again to get a command prompt.

At what stage of the eCS boot process should I do this - once I get into the graphical shell?


Edit: fixed a typo

guzzi

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At what stage of the eCS boot process should I do this - once I get into the graphical shell?


Right at the start when the white square appears in the left upper corner of the screen.

Jean-Yves

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Thank you!

Alex Taylor

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Quote
Boot from the eComStation 1.2R CD-ROM and press Shift-F3 again to get a command prompt.

At what stage of the eCS boot process should I do this - once I get into the graphical shell?

Yes, once the graphical installer starts, Shift+F3 at any subsequent screen will open a command prompt.

Jean-Yves

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Re: Corrupt partition 0 error when trying to install eCS 1.2R on real hardware
« Reply #6 on: November 01, 2014, 05:34:07 pm »
Thanks Alex

Jean-Yves

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Re: Corrupt partition 0 error when trying to install eCS 1.2R on real hardware
« Reply #7 on: November 02, 2014, 03:31:04 pm »
Didn't work alas. Same error after running the VCU command (incidentally, I need to go to File->Expert Mode to get that option to show)

I'll stick with my VM for now despite it's laggy mouse problems and no USB!  :)  Then I'll keep an eye on what Mensys/ Xeu get up to up may well upgrade to 2.2 when that comes out and then try again then.  (Or I may just crack and get 2.1!!!)

ivan

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Re: Corrupt partition 0 error when trying to install eCS 1.2R on real hardware
« Reply #8 on: November 02, 2014, 05:56:17 pm »
Don't give up yet, there is a way round it.

For some reason old Dell computers tend to have had problems when anyone wanted to change the windows OS to anything else.  My way of dealing with that is to use either a floppy, where they had floppy drives, or a bootable CD with DFSee on them. http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee/download.php  The fact that they are DOS based makes no difference.

Boot from the floppy or CD and use DFSee to delete the partition on the disk (only problem with that is if you want to keep the windows version there) and then create the new partitions for eCS.

If you want to keep the windows that is there you need to first defrag that partition using windows tools then use DFSee to reduce the size of the windows partition to give you room for bootmanager (install with DFSee) and eCS (create partition with DFSee).

After that you should be able to install any version of eCS without problems.

Jean-Yves

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Re: Corrupt partition 0 error when trying to install eCS 1.2R on real hardware
« Reply #9 on: November 03, 2014, 10:00:02 am »
Thanks Ivan, I'll have one more go. 

I did actually delete the partition on my first attempt as I did not find the VCU option at first so tried various other things in desperation!  ;D But I only did this when I was at at the command prompt within the eCS installer. Maybe booting directly into DFSee would be better

Could you confirm the steps/settings I need to use. I think these should be:

1. Delete the existing partition
2. create new partition (to keep it simple I'll create one single partition)
3. Set the partition type (might be the wrong term) to eCS JFS (from memory: type 35?  There was also a type 7 I think that looked a possibility but I forget what it was)
4. Save then make the partition active and bootable
5. Save and restart with eCS installer CD?

Do I need to fix the disk geometry, zero out leading disk space, rewrite MBR etc?

Again, many thanks. I really appreciate the great help from members of this forum.

ivan

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Re: Corrupt partition 0 error when trying to install eCS 1.2R on real hardware
« Reply #10 on: November 03, 2014, 10:59:10 am »
First of all read carefully what DFSee says about the disk - you may find there is some strange geometry or there is a hidden partition.

If there is anything strange correct that first then proceed with your list.

The only exception to that list is to make the partition HPFS - bootable JFS is not available in the early versions of eCS.

Here we always make a 1GB HPFS boot partition and one or more JFS partitions (depends on the size of the disk) for things like 'home', 'programs', etc.  That way it is simple to do OS updates without messing with installed programs, but again that is just personal preference. 

Jean-Yves

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Re: Corrupt partition 0 error when trying to install eCS 1.2R on real hardware
« Reply #11 on: November 03, 2014, 11:11:36 am »
Great - many thanks for the additional info.  I will do as you say. Wish me luck!  ;)