mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) (05/02/89)
I'm having some trouble with my Zenith Z-148. Even since I reformatted
my 20MB ST-225 for a 17MB partition and a 3.8MB partition, I've had
two phantom drives that just won't go away. Here's what I did:
1. Completely backed up my hard disk, twice, with COREfast.
2. Loaded up PART.EXE, and configured partition 1 for the first 17MB or
so of the disk, and partition 2 for the rest. Partitions 3 and 4 are
unassigned.
3. Rebooted, and reformatted my C: drive (partition 1). Restored parts
of my backup, and then found out that DOS wouldn't recognize partition
2 as drive D:.
4. Finally figured out what I had to do to activate partition 2: Run
CONFIGUR.EXE, and flip the "Manual/Automatic Partition Assignment"
flag in IO.SYS to Manual, and then use ASGNPART to assign partition
2 to drive D:. Works fine now.
5. Format drive D:, and restore the rest of my backup.
6. Reboot, and try running the Norton Disk Doctor to check my hard drive.
Guess what: It won't load up. Complains about a "Divide Error", and
boots me back to DOS. Now, DOS thinks that I don't have any files on
any of my disks, and only internal DOS commands work. Reboot, and run
NU.
7. Here's where it gets interesting: NU lists 6 drives: A:, C:, D:, E:, F:,
and G:. A:, C:, and D: I can account for: My floppy drive and two
hard disk partitions. However, drives E: and F: seem to have materialized
out of nowhere. They change size randomly, and trying to change drives to
them from the DOS prompt results in a "Drive E: not ready. Abory,
Retry, Ignore?". Sometimes I can change to them from inside NU, and
when I get the drive's technical specifications, they look real weird.
(Over 2 million root directory entries? A 17 *gigabyte* disk?) They
seem to change around randomly. (Oh yeah - Drive G: is my 400K device
driver.) I've tried using LASTDRIVE=E in my CONFIG.SYS, but that doesn't
help at all.
Help! I can no longer run programs that try to figure out which drives are
available by themselves, because DOS will let them chdir() to the drive,
and then give me the familiar "Abort, Retry, Ignore" message. I've tried
removing the 400K device driver from my CONFIG.SYS, and this has just
made drive G: into a phantom drive like E: and F:. If I switch IO.SYS
back to "Automatic" partition assignment, I can't use partition 2 without
disabling partition 1!
--
Marc Unangst
UUCP smart : mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us
UUCP dumb : ...!uunet!sharkey!mudos!mju
UUCP dumb alt.: ...!{ames,rutgers}!mailrus!clip!mudos!mju
Internet : mju%mudos@cardiology.ummc.umich.edunelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (05/02/89)
Zenith has had, for many years now (at least seven), their own partitioning scheme. The implementation of it used to require that you have four drive specifiers, each of which could be assigned to any hard drive and any partition. Because so many pieces of software think that any drive that exists is a valid, on-line drive, Zenith had to create a scheme that would create only valid drives. Automagic partition assignment was created. When automagic partition assignment is selected, C: will be assigned the first partition on the first hard drive. Unfortunately, you only have a choice between one automagic partition and four manual partitions. My suggestion to you is to create two new very small partitions and assign them to E: and F:. -- --russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) I'm a right-to-lifer -- everyone has a right to earn a living sufficient to feed himself and his family.