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Newly cloned hard drive doesn't boot

Started by Tommy in Scotland, 2009.03.31, 00:29:52

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ivan

Hi Robert,

If you're going that far back then almost anything goes :)

I remember the old Packard Bells and how some worked one way and some the other.  In fact I just opened the one I keep here, it belonged to my late daughter, to see how I'd cabled up the CD.  It's slave to the hard disk because there is only one IDE interface.  If I remember correctly a lot of the early machines only had the one IDE interface hence the reason most CD drives came jumpered as slave.

As long as the old machines survive we'll have to remember how to get them working as most of the youngsters of today only know about dual or quad core boxes.

Anyway thanks for reminding me of the old old desktop machines and their quirks, at least they didn't have as many as some of the punched card readers or 8 inch drives.

Tommy in Scotland

Hi Robert and Ivan,
I am unsure as to why the Celeron PC would not boot to a CD. It was set in the BIOS to boot to CD first, then to hard drive second. I tried the CD drive as master, as slave, on Primary and Secondary controllers, and I even ripped out the drive and put another one in, but nothing made the PC boot. It did not matter what hard drive was in, or what type of bootable CD was in, I tried my bootable Easeus DiskCopy 2.3 CD, Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Windows 95 CDs, and no matter what I did the PC just said "Missing Operating System". I then put the hard drive into a fairly similar PC system with a 700MHz Celeron, and it booted to CD flawlessly. I finally got a working, booting clone of my OS/2 Warp3 Connect hard drive. I can now fiddle around with it without fear of losing everything as I have the original drive kept safe.

Once booted into OS/2, however, the CD drive does not show up under "Drives" or in the Win3.11 File Manager. So, any chance of loading software off the Hobbes CD is out, at least for the time being.

Tommy in Scotland

Quote from: ivan on 2009.03.31, 15:28:24
Hi Tommy,

Sorry I missed the bit about increasing the partition size to one over 2GB.  I assumed when you said clone you meant just that, a partition the same size as the original.

Ah, I should point out, EASEUS DiskCopy clones a partition at a time, so my 545MB original drive was copied to the 4.3GB drive as a 545MB partition, and the same when copying to the 1.2GB drive. It appears there may be something at fault with the 4.3GB drive, as I made a clone of a WinNT4.0 hard drive on that same drive later on, and it also would not boot. But that no longer matters, I now have a booting clone which I can experiment with. The original can be kept safe, to avoid any unrecoverable disasters.

EASEUS DiskCopy never alters the partition in any way when copying, so your source partition will always be the same size on the copy. If you want to change the partition size, EASEUS also market a repartitioning utility. I have not tried that one yet.

ivan

QuoteAh, I should point out, EASEUS DiskCopy clones a partition at a time, so my 545MB original drive was copied to the 4.3GB drive as a 545MB partition, and the same when copying to the 1.2GB drive
That's what I found when I tried it on a virtual machine but didn't know if you had used something like Partition Magic to expand it (old versions of PM will work with OS/2 newer don't).

There is a way to check if your 4.3 GB drive is OK. Set it to SLAVE and add it as the second drive to your working MASTER. You can then see if it appears with a drive letter in the drives object.  If it does you can try to format it HPFS, if it does not then use FDISKPM.EXE (in OS/2 dir) and see if it appears there, if not find nearest garbage bin and dump. If it does appear, delete all partitions and remake, reboot and see if they appear in the drives object, if not - bin.

BTW the iso I have of the updates has information on making floppies for installing.  I once updated a box with only two floppies and a second box.  Insert floppy and start update, have second floppy ready, swap when told, put floppy in second box and write disk, repeat as necessary.  Tedious but works.

Tommy in Scotland

I have been rebuilding various computers recently (OK I admit it was a Windows 98 PC... ahem...), and today I decided to put the OS/2 clone into the vacant 400MHz Celeron system, together with the correct Matrox G400 dual-head video card.

And guess what? It wouldn't boot! The system posted, then when the OS/2 block should have appeared in the top-left corner, there was nothing... except a flashing white cursor.

The system I made the clone on was a Celeron 700MHz system, and I used the same video card. I have checked the BIOS settings in the 400MHz computer and the hdd is detected as Pri.master and set as the second boot device after floppy. And yes I checked the floppy drive, which was empty!

I have tried rebooting several times, but it just goes to a flashing white cursor, no OS/2 block ever appears. Where may the system be going wrong, and how may I sort it most effectively?

I have the OS/2 installation floppies and CD ROM handy, but I thought I should ask before I do anything with them, just in case the problem does not require the installation media.

Tommy in Scotland

Since submitting the above post I've put in the setup boot floppy just to see what it would do, and it says:

OS/2!! SYS01475
OS/2!! SYS02027

ivan

Hi Tommy,

OS/2!! SYS01475  the file OS2BOOT cannot be found.
OS/2!! SYS02027  insert a system diskette and restart the system.

It appears you have either a dud floppy disk or the floppy drive has a fault (unplugged cable, dirt on heads or just dead).

You need to be sure all the cables are secure on the drives and motherboard.  Then go into the bios and set it to show everything as the system starts (find something like 'quick power on self test' and set it to disabled).  Then when you start the machine you should be able to see if the hard disk is found.  If it isn't then fix that problem first. If it is, then you have to go through the procedures we outlined earlier (if it's a FAT formatted then run sysinstx against it, but that requires a working floppy drive).

The other thing is to use a bootable DOS diskette and see if you can boot the machine with that - if not then it may be time to consign the old box to the tip.

RobertM

Hi Tommy,

If the floppy drive turns out to be good, then the problem (as noted above) is probably the disk - but the problem may not be the disk being bad - it could simply be the wrong one (see "EITHER WAY" below.

Is this an original disk, or one that you created?

If you created it, did you use the tools that come with OS/2? The method is:

XDFCOPY (LOCATION OF FILE)\DISK0.DSK A:

If memory serves, you can use the xdfcopy program on a Windows machine from a command prompt. Inotherwords, if you dont have a running OS/2 machine, simply copy the xdfcopy file from the OS/2 CD, and copy the DISK0.DSK file from same CD onto a Windows machine and then run the command.

EITHER WAY: Disk0 is the bootable floppy (should be labeled "Install Disk") followed by disk1.dsk (and disk2.dsk for Warp 4 upwards).

Thus the other potential problem is if you are starting with disk1.dsk, you aren't using the bootable floppy at all. IBM has a tendency of labelling things in a more computer oriented manner (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) instead of the way humans generally would (1, 2, 3, 4, etc).

Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
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ivan

Sorry Robert.  the install disks are created with LOADDSKF because they are DOS readable.  The other disks are created with  XDFCOPY!


Tommy in Scotland

#24
Oops! Yes Robert I put in the wrong floppy.  ::) But I'm still curious as to why the hard drive will not boot in this PC. The PC I made it on was also a Celeron with a 100MHz fsb. I am using the same video card. I cannot help thinking if it boots in one PC it should boot in the other.

OK since typing that, I have got the OS/2 Warp 3 Connect CD to load (using the correct floppies :-[) , and I have used it to access the hard drive via a command prompt. Unfortunately I don't know how to use cmd to tell the hard drive to boot, and if I did, how would I know what to fix? I tried typing chkdsk /fixmbr, but it said it "cannot accept the fixmbrc parameter". At least I can browse the hard drive's contents in text mode.

The CD is now sitting at the EASY Installation / ADVANCED Installation screen. As I don't want to overwrite my entire drive after spending so long setting it up, I have not gone past this point.

ivan

Tommy, the simple thing to try is to go to a command prompt by booting from your floppies. this should give you an A:> prompt.  Then with the first (bootable) floppy in the drive type SYSINSTX C: followed by hitting enter.  This will put the necessary boot information on your hard disk FAT partition.

If it still does not boot after that then I think you will have to through a fresh install unless Robert has any other ideas.

Tommy in Scotland

OK Ivan, I've done that. I still can't get it to boot. After post, the computer just goes to a flashing white dash in the top left corner of the screen. I cannot understand this... this drive booted perfectly in the Windows 98 PC, which is also a Celeron... just a different make and model of motherboard. I even transplanted the exact same Matrox G400 video card. There must be something else happening which is preventing it from booting. I've been through the BIOS settings and cannot find anything amiss.

Tommy in Scotland

I've tried a Windows 2000 hard drive in this (Celeron 400) PC now, and it booted perfectly. It originally came out of the Celeron 700. I made the clone of the OS/2 drive on the Celeron 700. Both machines have the same fsb speed. The Win2000 drive will boot on both PCs. The old OS/2 (source) drive also boots on both PCs, but the clone drive only boots on the 700(!?). The system is detecting something in the boot sector, otherwise it would say "Missing operating system" or "Invalid system disk". It just won't start OS/2, the white OS/2 block never appears. I'm also wondering if it could be an obscure motherboard fault. The CD ROM drive also will not boot, regardless of how I set it up in BIOS. Even if I set it as a first or second boot item, it never boots. I tried a Windows 95 CD and a Windows 2000 CD. It just bypassed the drive altogether. I swapped drives twice, and all three CD drives failed to boot. Perhaps there may be a link here... it might provide a clue as to why some drives will boot in this system and others won't.

ivan

Tommy, I think you may be right in thinking there is a fault on the motherboard or it nay just be the way the IDE controller sees the hard disk.  The older motherboards had various ways of setting up hard disks (LBA, large, etc.).  If there is a difference between the two motherboards then you have problems because this motherboard can not see the drive layout.

If this is the case then you will have to FDISK and Format the drive on that motherboard, then the simple expedient of ziping up your install from a drive that works, burning it to CD and then unziping it on to the prepared drive (requires a third floppy disk with unzip and system files on it. You boot to a command prompt, swap to the third disk and use unzip).

Just remember, there comes a time when it is wise to cut your losses and give up trying to get it to work.  I do know the frustration of something not working when it should. A friend brought in his computer because it had stopped working, could I fix it? I spent three weeks, on and off, on it only to tell him in the end it would not work as he had overheated it and most of the problems were intermittent.

Andi

One thing you can try is, download DFSee DOS boot disk, leave your harddisk in the system and boot from the DFSee floppy. Maybe DFSee shows you errors on startup about wrong CHS values or 'some bios can not boot' or something like that. Maybe this gives us a clue what's going wrong....