win98 not able to handle drives >32GB

viper_1May 11, 2003, 6:54 PM

Hi Folks,

Having trouble here transfering my win98SE system over to a larger hard drive. The primary DOS partition is 5GB and the Extended partition is 35GB, partitioned as 4GB, 10GB, 10GB, 6GB, 2GB and 2GB. Windows shows the Last 2 partitions, but cannot access these partitions. I ran the FDisk fix suggested on the Microsoft side. Also writing to the 6GB partition affects the primary dos partition, causing one of the FAT copies to be incosistent from the other. Fixing this then corrupts directories on the 6GB partition. Whatever the problem partitions under the 32GB mark seem to be unaffected. Not sure if this is due to upgrading from win95, the VIA Hard Disk controllers on my ageing K7M motherboard, (Had to flash the BIOS), or something else I haven't considered.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanx.

4 answers Last reply May 12, 2003

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TeqMay 11, 2003, 7:32 PM

Get hold of a copy of win2000 or XP and say goodbye to those screwy problems.

Win98 was a dead horse 3 years ago.

--->It ain't better if it don't work<---
4Ryan6May 12, 2003, 3:11 AM

Your M/Bs BIOS may be holding you back, if that is the problem you'll need to flash the BIOS with the latest available flash. Windows 98SE works just fine on 40Gig hardrives, however if your system is an upgrade from Win95 you may have some baggage you don't need, you'd be better off with a full installation Win98SE disk instead of an upgrade disk. In the CMOS setup, set your hardrive recognition to AUTO and size to LBA, to take full advantage of the disk size, however it may take a reinstall at those settings, to get it to reset itself.

Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.

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4Ryan6May 12, 2003, 3:24 AM

Quote:

Get hold of a copy of win2000 or XP and say goodbye to those screwy problems.

Win98 was a dead horse 3 years ago.

Thats the first thing I've seen you post I disagree with, I'm dual booting Win98SE and WinXP Pro, maybe when SP2 comes out, it will resolve some of the remaining issues with WinXP that haven't been resolved yet, or maybe it won't, but until it does I prefer Win98SE, I do some video encoding and Win98SE was encoding the exact same files at 10Fps faster than WinXP Pro, on the same machine with identical hardrives. Win98SE is far from a dead horse in my book.

Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.

viper_1May 12, 2003, 8:00 PM

Thanks Guys, I have eventually found the answer. It was the crumby Hard Drive Controllers from VIA. The latest upgrade for this didn't solve the problem, but they also had a new 4 in 1 driver patch that did the Job. I still wanted to keep my win98SE installation as a reference for the new XP machine I am building, which will in course take over the duties of this machine.

Thanks once again.

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