Win98 Large IDE drives running in msdos mode

[Guest]

Please, someone out therre tell me that you have the updated esdi_506.pdr from Microsquish for Win98 that fixes the problem of having more than one large (+8 GB) hard drive installed on Win98! This is a known issue with Win98, but Microsoft would rather convince people to upgrade for bugfixes rather than post updated device drivers for Win98. @#$%^!

If the second hard disk is more than 8GB, and not the boot drive, it will only run in msdos compatibility-mode if a busmastering driver is installed. I submitted an online incident report to Microsoft tech support, but will probably die of old age before I hear anything back from them. Anyone out there get the fix from them?

 

[Toejam31]

Microsoft is not going to help you with this ... you are looking in the wrong direction. The problem is because the BIOS on your mainboard does not support LBA and the INT13H extensions.

The solution is to contact the manufacturer of your hard drive for updated drivers and/or the manufacturer of your mainboard for an updated BIOS. Or to use a program from a third-party company that adds updated protected-mode drivers for the config.sys and the Master Boot Record. Or to add an IDE controller card that suppports the Interrupt 13 extensions, even if your BIOS does not.

There has been no new version of the Esdi_506.pdr since Windows 95 ... so don't hold your breath waiting for a new release. Microsoft has relied on the hard drive manufacterers in the past to provide technical support for the problem.

It's possible that you could use a program from OnTrack Computer Systems called Disk Manager. The Disk Manager XBIOS drivers, included in the program, should solve the problem, if you use the utility to prepare the disk in advance before installing the operating system.

<A HREF="http://www.ontrack.com/diskmanager" target="_new">http://www.ontrack.com/diskmanager</A>

Unfortunately, it's not free.

The final solution is to upgrade the mainboard and hard drive so you can have components that support a modern standard. As long as you are using a real-mode driver to provide the geometry translation, you are going to have problems with 32-bit disk access. But just adding an updated driver won't solve the problem completely ... you are going to have to format and partition the drive, and be able to specify the CHS parameters in the BIOS so that more than 1024 cylinders can be used.

<font color=purple>My Rig:</font color=purple> <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847</A>

 

[Guest]

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q175/6/29.asp

Buzzzzt! Oh, I'm sorry, but we do have a nice consolation prize for you... I got a copy of Win98SE's ESDI_506.PDR from a friend of mine that just got 98SE, and it IS DIFFERENT, and is the version number that they said would fix the problem! It fixed my problem right away. This was a known issue at the Microsoft knowlege base, and it easy to document by READING the article. Microsoft will not release it as a patch because it takes millions of man hours to post a 24K file to their Windows update site, and because of their no-support tech support policy on the legacy operating systems. We should all go out and buy a new OS every six months rather than expect product support!

 

[Toejam31]

I'm glad that your problem is corrected. But if you don't mind, I'll skip the consolation prize. Not interested. I'll just take note of the information for future use. I'm sure that I'll find that to be more helpful than anything else.

Toejam31

<font color=purple>My Rig:</font color=purple> <A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?rigid=6847</A>