Maxtor EZ Bios

[gjarrell]

I had a new Maxtor 4.3Gb HD installed before I upgraded to a new processor, Win95, and motherboard. As a result, Maxtor's software they call EZ Bios was installed to operate the HD. I would like to get rid of it, because it's unnecessary now. I have downloaded files from Maxtor to do a low level format, but I'm anxious about how to reestablish the HD partitions and restore the files to their original locations via a backup. Is my best solution to have a techy do it for me?

[seti]

I use Maxtor EZ-drive to format and set up my partitions (on a wd caviar, and segate medalist...but it recognizes them). It's very simple, as it's a bootable disk. Your HD, should have come with some sort of similar utility.

[CMonster]

First off, you are probably well off to follow the instructions with the Maxtor software EXACTLY. You would not be the first person to have to return a Maxtor drive due to a bad low level format.

That said, setting up your drive after the format is a snap:

1. run fdisk from a Win95b/c or Win98 startup disk, and choose "y" (yes) when it asks if your want large drive support; this will enable FAT32 and allow you to use the entire drive as one partition instead of having to partition it into 2GB chunks. Then create a primary DOS partition and use the entire size of the drive (if you are inclined to). You will need to reboot when finished with fdisk.

2. format c:

You are now ready to install an operating system.

I've been told that Windows 98 can automate the fdisk/format process when installing from scratch, but I have never tried it that way.

if the Maxtor software does not get rid of Easy BIOS then here is another method I garnered via this BBS:

by Dave Lawrence, ICTS Staff—JAARS, Waxhaw dave_lawrence@sil.org

Some people have Ontrack Disk Manager or EZ-Drive on a hard drive that’s larger than 528MB in a desktop computer that’s too old to know about LBA (Logical Block Addressing). If you get a new computer without a hard disk drive (HDD), or a new motherboard, and reuse the same HDD, how do you get rid of the Dynamic Drive Overlay (D.D. Overlay) that Ontrack or EZ put on the HDD, so you can use the LBA capability of the new motherboard BIOS?

There are two or three things to try. Because of certain variables, it is unpredictable how hard it might be to get rid of the D.D. Overlay.

The Dynamic Drive Overlay identifies itself just after the computer’s Power On Self Test (POST) when the system first starts to read the HDD for booting. A blue banner appears on the black and white text mode screen which says Disk Manager or EZ-Drive or whatever your D.D. Overlay is. It says if you want to boot a floppy to press the Space bar, or Shift+ Space, or the combination your system requires. After waiting almost too short a time for you even to get your fingers up to the keys, it proceeds to boot the HDD.

That blue banner with the special key instruction for floppy boot is the thing you want to get rid of.


Warning! The following will destroy everything on your HDD. You must do a backup and be prepared to entirely reinstall your operating system (Windows), application software, your data, everything.

1) Back up your HDD to prepare to lose everything that was on it. Be sure you have a bootable diskette of your operating system. You’ll need a boot disk of DOS 5.0 or above, or Windows 95 startup disk. Your floppy disk should contain COMMAND.COM and the hidden system files, to make it bootable, plus the following DOS files: FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM, DEBUG.EXE, and SYS.COM.

2) From DOS (or DOS mode of Windows 95), run Fdisk and delete all partitions on the drive.

3) Restart the computer with no diskette in the A: drive. If the blue banner is gone, skip down to #8 below.

4) Boot your startup floppy and run FDISK/MBR (to rewrite the Master Boot Record). Restart with the A: drive empty. If the blue banner is gone, skip down to #8.

5) Boot your startup floppy and then run the Disk Manager or EZ program from the floppy that either came with the drive or you created using the Seamove program (for Seagate HDD). Most versions of this program have blue menu boxes with yellow or white text (in text mode video). Wade through the menu system of the program until you find an item to Remove Disk Manager (Remove EZ), and run that. That procedure should get rid of the startup blue banner. Afterwards, restart with the A: drive empty. If the blue banner is gone, skip down to #8.

6) If you have no such floppy as in #5 above, or if none of the above works to remove the blue banner, use the following Debug script which I recently discovered. Boot from floppy and run Debug.

7) At Debug’s hyphen prompt, type all the following lines, ending each line with the Enter key:

F 200 L200 0

a 100

mov ax,301

mov bx,200

mov cx,1

mov dx,0080 (Note: use 0081 for second fixed disk)

int 13

int 3

(enter a blank line here)

G=100

q

8) The HDD should have no partitions nor Dynamic Drive Overlay on it. Use Fdisk to set up the drive partition(s), and Format to format it.

9) Reinstall the operating system and restore all software, etc.



[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 12-16-1999).]

[gjarrell]

Of course, I found on Maxtor's web site a Technote on how to uninstall EZ-Bios. It's document # 24006 entitled Uninstallation Procedure for MaxBlast version 9.xxM. Thanks for the responses to my problem!

[psyklone]

I have several pretty nifty DEBUG scripts if anyone is interested. Low level formatting a hard drive, blowing out CMOS, bumping out BIOS passwords, deleting the first 10 sectors, simultaneously clearing CMOS and low leveling the hard drive, etc, etc. If anyone is interested you can mail me.

nojive@usa.net


p.s.
these scripts have all been tested (and some edited/appended) by me so they are guaranteed to work ... I wouldn't pass of bum scripts to my sysopt buds!

[cyphen]

yeah, if all you want to do is remove EZ BIOS, then low level formatting the drive is like blowing up your house because your carpet got a stain - just use a stain remover - in this case you can boot from the maxblast disk, and in the advanced options you can disable EZBIOS. Of course you probably already know this since you looked it up on the matrox website. out of curiousity, why get rid of ezbios? the only detrimental thing i heard about ezbios is that it's incompatible with partition magic, and if you try installing partition magic while using ezbios, it will reformat your drive (according to the maxtor techie)

[Alzarius]

I don't know about the Maxtor program, but Ontrack has an option to remove the drive overlay without having to do anything like low level formatting. It does recommend that you backup the data though. I used this option to remove Ontrack from my Seagate drive and it worked flawlessly. The Maxtor program may have a similar option. You should prolly run the program off of the disk and see what it says.