SERIOUS Drive problem!

[Wormo]

Windows 98 is telling me that it is using ms-dos compatibility mode for my drives because of a driver in my config.sys or autoexec.bat files.In addition it wont let me access my CD-Rom drive. Both of these system files are empty. I have a Maxtor 8gig ( windows), a Seagate 1gig (Linux), and a hitachi 4X cdrom. I did a virus scan and came up with nothing. Whats going on here?

[CMonster]

Is there any yellow exclaination mark in the Device Manager? I'm guessing you just upgraded your motherboard or something? Most likely you need to install the proper drivers for the disk controlers. Try also the following link:
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum9/HTML/000599.html



[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 02-07-2000).]

[Paul V]

When did this start? I've had this happen a lot for exactly the reason it says -- loading a real mode (DOS or Win 3.1) driver in a system file. If this is the case it generally happens because you upgrade from 3.1 to 9x. Is this the case?

As far as I know, there are 4 major reasons it says this:

1) Disk controller problems, remove and reinstall
2) Real mode driver in autoexec.bat, config.sys, win.ini, system.ini -- find and comment out
3) You have the "Disable 32 bit protect mode support" option checked, under CP -> System -> Performance -> File System -> Troubleshooting
4) Virus

I've seen all 4 happen, they all can cause this problem. Do you have any IDE hard drives or drives attached to the floppy cables that are not hard drives, CDROMs, or floppies? Tape drives on the floppy cable loading drivers had caused this on 2 machines I serviced.

[Wormo]

I just installed a voodoo2 card and downloaded the new drivers off the net. In addition i scanned the drivers for viruses.
The device manager shows no exclamation or any signs of the sort. The only thing that troubles me is that once I tried to boot Linux and said something about loading default modules because of a improper shutdown. I noticed that as it did it work it said something about /hda1. could it have affected something?

[ram]

dont know about win98 but win 95 you go into
regedit and search for noide if itsa there delete it

[Wormo]

noide didnt work

[Wormo]

As for the scan and defrag, I ran both about a week ago. Would u recommend I disconnect the Linux drive to see if that is were the prop is?

[Axel]

no - as long as it is a physically different drive - 99% chance it has nothing to do with the other problem.

[ram]

Wormo did you boot into safe mode and check device listings for ghost listings? Delete
all the ghost listings and the hard drive listings and reboot,see if win98 fixes the problem when it redetects the hard drives..

[Wormo]

It seems that Ram was right! I went into safemode and deleted the ide driver, windows corrected it. Thanks

[Axel]

RAM may be on the right track - you might get back into regedit and look here:

HKEY_Local_Machine
-software
--Microsoft
---Windows
----Current Version
-----Run

what's in there?? - Every now and then, windows gets confused and thinks something running here may either be running in one of the files you mentioned.

Also - sometimes something within this registry area will cause something else to run which causes the problem, so it's tough to find what the root cause might be.

Been long since you did a scandisk & a defrag on the hard drive? You might start a defrag without proceeding through the procedure to see what level of file fragmentation you have on the hard drive. With the additional LINUX issue you mention - sounds like it's possible you have cross-linked files on the hard drive causing this issue.

Good luck.

Oops, just noticed you have the two on two different drives - couldn't be file fragmentation impacting both OSs.....

[This message has been edited by Axel (edited 02-07-2000).]