HDD troubles

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sierra9972

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My Win98 hard drive will not boot. The error message I get is "Invalid Media Type". (This problem started after I unsuccessfully tried to install this HD as a slave in a WinXp computer. The XP box was a NTFS. Could this have caused my grief?)

I also tried installing this HDD as a slave in a Win98 box. The HDD is recognized durning boot up, but Windows does not recognize it. It doesn't even assign a drive letter to it.

Thanks in advance,

Todd
 
providing there isnt valuable data on it, i would fdisk, format and then try it as a slave.
 
ADZ said:
providing there isnt valuable data on it, i would fdisk, format and then try it as a slave.

Not valuable data, but still data that I don't want to lose. Will fdisk delete my data or will that only happen when I format?

I plan to eventually format the HDD, but really want to retrieve the files first.
 
MicroBell said:
Fdisk will delete the partitions and data if the drive is formated. When useing the drive in the XP system...did you set the jumper to slave? Was it pluged into IDE1? XP can read the 98 (FAT32) drive...but 98 can't read an XP drive that has NTFS file system.

Before you swaped the drive to your XP setup..was it running Ok? Booted fine? Make sure your IDE settings in the bios are set to auto.

I'm not exactly clear what you mean by "......if the drive is formated." Can you please expand.

I may have had the jumper settings wrong at first, but did confirm them after. Could this have caused my trouble if both drives were set to master.(One thing to note here is that the XP HDD would not boot either after I did this. But it was a new build, so I just formatted it and reloaded the os.)

The 98 drive was plugged into the same IDE as the master XP drive and yes the drive was booted and tested ok prior to moving it. I don't think the bios is the problem as it recognizes the drive durning boot up.

Thanks for any and all help,

Todd
 
yes deleting a partition will erase all data on that partition deleted. the reason why that happened is because stupid winxp messed up your boot info (bootloader) for both operating systems.

so putting the drives back exactly as they were before does nothing. you could have just editted your boot files which is a text file located at the system root.
 
Also if you change the jumper settings and still having problems take a look at the bios settings and make sure that the hard drive is setup as a slave and that also you don't have other drive setup as a slave as well.
 
ekÆsine said:
yes deleting a partition will erase all data on that partition deleted. the reason why that happened is because stupid winxp messed up your boot info (bootloader) for both operating systems.

so putting the drives back exactly as they were before does nothing. you could have just editted your boot files which is a text file located at the system root.


If the boot info is messed up, why can't I access this drive when it is used as a slave?(jumpers, cmos, confirmed correct)

How do I edit the boot files? Won't fdisk /mbr repair them for me?
Also, fdisk /mbr shouldn't delete the partitions unless the last two bytes of the MBR are not 55AA, right? How do I check what these last two bytes are?

Thanks for all the great help,

Todd
 
assuming your hardware is setup right (jumpers,ect) if you are using the operating system on one of the hard disks you are trying to fix thats the problem. fdisk/ mbr fixes the master boot record, not the boot loader. you would have to ask someone else how to access the boot loader file, i have no idea.

i beleive it is simply a text file called boot.ini in the root of the OS (C: ). i would use a knoppix CD and boot with it http://www.knoppix.com/ than use it to edit your bootloader with its text editor. you can also just use knoppix to save all your files, than reinstall windows. it has network support
 
ekÆsine said:
assuming your hardware is setup right (jumpers,ect) if you are using the operating system on one of the hard disks you are trying to fix thats the problem. fdisk/ mbr fixes the master boot record, not the boot loader. you would have to ask someone else how to access the boot loader file, i have no idea.

i beleive it is simply a text file called boot.ini in the root of the OS (C: ). i would use a knoppix CD and boot with it http://www.knoppix.com/ than use it to edit your bootloader with its text editor. you can also just use knoppix to save all your files, than reinstall windows. it has network support

I've got the failed HHD in a working Win98 box setup as slave. As I mentioned before, the bios recognizes the drive, but Win98 does not. I'm unable to do anything with this drive through windows. So I'm assuming that the boot loader file is ok, otherwise I woud have thought I should be able to access this drive through windows????

So I'm thinking fdisk /mbr is the way to go. My only worry is the issue of it possibly deleting the existing partions. Now, if knoppix will allow me to recover my files, then that would be good, as long as knoppix can access this drive??
 
the reason win98 can't see it is because you are using NTFS, not because your MBR is damaged. win98 has not support for the NTFS filing system. and if it cannot boot up if it previously was able to than yes, your files used to tell the operating system how to boot up is wrong. this was caused when you slaved that hard disk and winxp changed your boot files. do a search on boot loader
 
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