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  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] LILO challenge
  • Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:26:03 +0000 (UTC)


Please explain exactly what you do here. I don't follow it.

This is the point: Your HD has a probability of being misrecognized by the
BIOS.


My much newer 100GB HD works badly on two computers, including the one
where I partitioned it, so I think it is a HD problem. But maybe DOS is
confused by 100GB. All of the linux partitions act normally.

I don't know what is your motherboard, but in the '80s and '90s it was
"normal" the recognizing
of 6GB to 10 GB and nothing higher. Many times we needed to run a
manufacturer's program in
order to have the total capacity recognized.
"Modern" PCs don't need that procedure anymore.

The computer was given to us with a dead 3.8GHz cpu and should be able to handle a 100MB drive. It is our fastest computer. But there may be something else wrong with it.

Please explain exactly what I should do to make my HD work properly. I
partitioned it with BL3 fdisk (PQMagic would not work at all with it) and
could format with e2fsck and copy files, but DOS format acts oddly. Files
appear and disappear and turn to gibberish and the drive sometimes boots
and sometime does not boot. I assumed bad partition table. It was given
to me with no files on it, in an XP computer.

Sindi

I use to be quite "radical" when concerning to "donated" HDs, because the
most of them
were given by Windows users.
Many HDs I've handled were infected by partition viruses which do not allow
us to
work properly on the partitions (and this is totally invisible for us).

We have been brought hard disks which spontaneously reboot instead of going into XP, and I think fdisk /mbr and repartition fixed them, but I was not the one who used them again.

Fdisk. cfdisk, qparted, etc. are unable to handle this kind of viruses.
They modify the MBR "conveniently" and everything seems to be Ok.

If the system doesn't show you a "track zero" error, and assuming that your
motherboard is not so old, try the following:
Use 'debug' from DOS (it also can be found on the Windows 98 rescue floppy
disk)
in the spite of "breaking" any partition at all, and then start it from
scratch.
It's a low-level modification, so be adviced that this process makes your
data to be lost.
It covers the MBR with spaces (character 20 ASCII)

To erase (overwrite with zeros) the MBR I can also
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
Would this be just as good? Can I then repartition and reformat?
Should I overwrite more than this in case the virus is hiding some place else?


After typing debug <enter> enter the following values:
Might this do permanent damage to the MBR if I do it wrong?

-F 200 L1000 0
-A CS:100
xxxx : 0100 MOV AX,301
xxxx : 0103 MOV BX,200
xxxx : 0106 MOV CX,1
xxxx : 0109 MOV DX,80
xxxx : 010C INT 13
xxxx : 010E INT 20
xxxx : 0110
-G
-Q

Notes: the "xxxx: 01xx"s are provided by 'debug';
At 0110 just type <enter> with no information.
When G is entered, the system says the program was ended normally;
(If not, just retype the information)
Q is for "quit".

(DX,80 is for the first HD and DX,81 for the second.
But I never use a second HD while doing this).

Having done this, you'll have a "brand new" HD what is to say you have
to partition, format, mount, etc.

I have practice doing that. Nothing important on the drive.

I found a site warning against using FDISK/MBR, which can cause more problems than it cures.

Would spinrite be adequate to determine if the drive is simply worn out?

I hope it works for you.

Teixeira



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