strange dot

[ocynic]

I am working on a homemade machine for a friend.wanted to install larger harddrive.(8.45G)have had all kinds of problems.the current one is trying to figure out what little square dot is??? Everytime I try to reboot machine from boot disk it says starting windows 98...ok. Any keyboard function results in this little square dot after the response and machine halts. Once I did get to the A:> prompt. When I went to change to C: it did this <<<C: and froze. HELP!!!!

[LazMan]

You didn't simply copy the files from the old hard drive to the new hard drive and expect everything to work, did you? Windoze will not allow for this. It is possible to mirror or image the original hard drive and re-create the operating system on a new hard drive. But, copying will not work due to the way Windoze works - there's this thing called the registry... ugh!

In general, when I want to update someone's computer with a bigger drive and I don't want to image the old drive for whatever reason, I plug the new drive into the computer with the soon-to-be old (or secondary) drive. I configure CMOS to recognize the new drive and using FDISK, set up partitions so that it will have a bootable primary, then format it with the /s option. Then I swap jumpers making this drive primary and the original secondary, make sure CMOS understands, then boot the machine. If everything goes well, I install the operating system from the original drive to the new drive (assuming, of couse, that the setup is there in the original drive's ROOT:\Windows\Options\Cabs directory or some similar location). Then, I hope that the computer's owner has the CDs for all the previously installed programs on the original drive so they can be properly installed and configured into the new registry - if not, then there's a lot of work to do to recreate registry conditions (though it's not impossible - I don't recommend it). In the case that the original install programs have become misplaced, then I would recommend keeping the original drive as it is, install the bigger hard drive as a secondary drive. It's a trivial matter to refer to drive d or e or whatever...

Hope this helps, /forum/smile.gif

Laz

[TigerStrike2]

You can't mirror a drive and then set it as the C drive and have it work? Are you sure? I am going to be trying exactly that when I get a 4.5 or 9.1 GB SCSI drive and transfering everything over to it from a Maxtor 13GB then putting the Max as drive D.

If necessary, I am willing to use a large axe to manually input the data into my computer...

[LazMan]

OK, Tiger done struck, too, and caught me with a play on semantics /forum/smile.gif

Here's the REAL definition of MIRRORING:

disk mirroring - A technique in which data is written to two duplicate disks simultaneously. This way if one of the disk drives fails, the system can instantly switch to the other disk without any loss of data or service. Disk mirroring is used commonly in online database systems where it's critical that the data be accessible at all times.

What I had intended to portray was a simple copy of the files will not work - and by definition - MIRRORING is a file-copy methodology. You are right TigerStrike2! I contradicted myself.

The CORRECT TERM is DRIVE IMAGING. I meant IMAGING, that's the technique I was thinking and for some reason my fingers typed MIRRORING. Tisk, Tisk.

My humble apologies to all who are confused by the wisdom imparted from my previous words.

/forum/redface.gif

Laz

[ocynic]

Thanks Lazman, but I didn't mirror, copy, hocus pocus or anything. This is a fresh, brand new, just out of the package drive that I was going to put a full install of Win98 on.It won't even let me FDISK it. This friggin' square dot comes up during boot from a quality made Win98 system disk. When I even try to set bootlog, the first prompt= press enter for(Y), esc for (N), I hit enter and this square dot comes up after the Y, and the system halts. HHEEELLLLPPP!!!!!