Hi Fang,

I did read your message about PM 2.37.12.

You write it is possible to use it with HD > 8 GB.

How did you manage that?

I tried it, as I need the options "Last, Last 3....." visible, which is
only available in 2.37.12. But I do not find a solution how to manage the
bigger HD (1313 Cylinders), as the PM only sees 1023 cylinders.

Thanks

Sepp

-----Original Message-----
From: Fang [SMTP:fang.zhao@...]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 7:57 AM
To: partman-discussion@egroups.com
Subject: Re: [partman-discussion] How do you install Advanced Boot Manager?

  Hi, Shawna:

I guess, you are using 2.38 which does not allow you to create more than 4
primary partitions, it does not have adv. Boot Man either. You have to use
that old, but nice 2.37.12. Press A, you can install Adv. Boot Man. and get
a partition table which can hold 31 primary partitions. Create all the
partitions you needed there. One drawback is, it support 8 GB disk in that
table only. But that doesn't mean you can't use disk space more than 8 gb,
more correctly, you can't use more than 8 gb as primary in that version.
The
advantage is you can use more than 4 pri partitions. You can leave that
rest
2 gb together with some small space within 8 gb in Extension partition
where
you can have more logic drive but not bootable.

good luck

Fang

hi

Parmasivam M said this on 12-12-2000 18:36:50:
>I used a software '  DrvInfo Changer ' to change my extended partition (d:
>drive's) serial number.But unfortunately after I used this my d: drive
>became inaccesible in Windows 98. It is still accessible in DOS.

	 try to run the scandisk or better yet, norton disk doctor
	 maybe some vfat option is wrongly set, dos doesnt read it,
	 but windows and norton does (and windows confuse himself)

	 try to use again that program and try to revert or seek any strange
	 thing

>I have an idea about parition table & other stuff so I used Ranish Partition
>Manager   Version 2.38 Beta 1.91 & changed all the diff media types like
>0x0F,0x0B but nothing works. I even reinstalled windows.

	 you can always try to do one fdisk /MBR to reset the MBR of the drive
	 but i think that the problem isnt from here...

>Any help in this regard is appreciated

	 isnt much but... 8)


	 all data you sent seens OK, i didnt find any strange thing
	 the only "wrong" thing is the linux swap...
	 you should place it more close to the start of the disk
	  linux swap (as partition 2 but in the begining of the drive), fat32 (as
partition 1)
	 then linux (as partition 3)
	 if you dont want to take the fat32 from the begining of the disk, at least
	 put fat32, linux swap, linux ext2

	 the beginnig of the HD is faster than all other places
	 the swap in linux would be faster... if you have alot memory, you will
	 not see any diference, but if you have little mem, the speed is big some times



  Daniel Jorge de Castro Carneiro da Mota Leite
                 higuita@...   ICQ# 15807797
  LINUX
   Michael Corleone: Soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren't.
   Hyman Roth: What does that tell you?
   Michael Corleone: It tells me the rebels could win.
               "The Godfather, Part II"

Hi,

I have just install a new hard disk of 20GB.
The old disk has a DOS (55MB), Windows98 (1950MB) and a Windows NT
(2000MB) partition. The new disk has DOS DOS (100MB), Windows98 (6GB)
and a Windows NT (6GB) partition.
I see that the system use the boot.ini from the DOS partition and no
more the boot.ini from the NT partition.

Mr. Ranish explain in his readme.txt :
Installing NT to partitions above 2G from the beginning of disk.
.... install special patch for Windows NT into FAT-16's boot sector.
To do that first select NT's partition and press Enter, then press F6
to install patch.....

When I select the NT partition, I recieve the message "This is a
unsupportrd file system" and I can't press the F6.

I use version 2.38 Beta 1.9 and the compact boot manager.

Can anybody help me ?
Thanks
Andre

I am using Ranish Partition Manager 1.9 and I am looking for a way to
delete all of the existing partitions on a disk, create a single FAT-
32 partition of all of the space on the drive and then do a quick
format of the drive and automatically reboot.  Does anyone know the
command line options to accomplish this so that I could put it in a
batch file?

Hi Folks,
     I've been dropping in on this group off and on for several months
now. My thanks to Mr. Ranish et al for a such a simple and very
effective utility, and to all those who have posted answers. Of the
commercial competition I've tried, this program still beats them
hands down in ny opinion, and free to boot (pun intended).
  Now to MY question...

Has there been (or will there be) any further work on a version to
support >8.4g with a save/load mbr feature?
If I understood source code etc. I would take a stab at it myself,
but I lack the knowledge to tackle the task (at least at this point).
Any comments appreciated. BTW is there a ng for this topic?
Reguards-----------------Sam

Guys, guys, guys......
                                will please anybody speak who knows its way
around here.

The 'MBR' consists out of (if memerory serves me right) 446 bytes of
'loadercode' and 64 bytes of partitiontable. Running 'fdisk /mbr' will only
replace the loadercode, how would it know to change the partitiontable.
So, running 'fdisk /mbr' will certainly not fix a mess in the partitiontable.

---- I was always in the meaning that 'running 'fdisk /mbr' ' would fix a
virusinfected MBR.
---- If You boot from a floppy, You will always be in a
Operating System: the system You made the bootfloppy from. There are
several OS's: but mainly DOS. Partman is a DOS program and runs under
DOS. There are no 'windows' bootdisks.
---- I maintain that "merlin" is not looking at the same MBR the bios is
looking at. In the partitiontable are four rows for four partitionentries. How
can anybody put umteen partitions on four rows, the partitiontable is only
64 or 66 bytes. MBR is AFAIK the very first sector on the HDD, make sure.....
There are 63 sectors after MBR, that are normally empty, but there are certain
programms that will use some of them, among others partman advanced and
diskmanagers.
---- I have not the time to elaborate more on this. Try (I hate to say this)
the xfdisk-mailinglist, xfdisk-public@egroups.com  they got some sharp guys
over there. (no low level, but zeroing might be in order, ask these guys)
See You                                               samuel

hi there!
i need some HELP, please.

a friend of mine deleted all the partitions with microsoft fdisk.
but i have to recover the data.

as he didn't do anything else, yet (except deleting the partitions)
all the data should still be on the HDD.

there was a thread concerning this problem, some time ago (trombetti
was involved).

there's a way to run partman and step through the cylinders pressing
the "+" key. when the partition entries get green, it should be OK.

well, because he just deleted the partition entries with fdisk, i
assume they're just removed from the partition table inside the MBR.

now when i run part.exe, strangely it displays all the partition info!
it seems to be quite the same way, as it was before:
one primary FAT, one extended FAT.

the only thing is on the primary: it's highlighted red and partman
says "boot sector doesn't have valid information".

how to proceed next?
let's assume partman displays the correct partition entries.
(BTW: where does partman get this info from, when it's not in the
partition table, any more?)

what happens now, when i just accept the suggested values by partman
and press "F2" to save?
what will be changed by this?

i guess, the bottsector still won't have valid information
afterwards, right?

  thanks for any help,

  philipp

onsdagen den 31 januari 2001 19:59 skrev du:
> hi there!
> i need some HELP, please.
>
> a friend of mine deleted all the partitions with microsoft fdisk.
> but i have to recover the data.
>
> as he didn't do anything else, yet (except deleting the partitions)
> all the data should still be on the HDD.
>
> there was a thread concerning this problem, some time ago (trombetti
> was involved).
>
> there's a way to run partman and step through the cylinders pressing
> the "+" key. when the partition entries get green, it should be OK.
>
> well, because he just deleted the partition entries with fdisk, i
> assume they're just removed from the partition table inside the MBR.
>
> now when i run part.exe, strangely it displays all the partition info!
> it seems to be quite the same way, as it was before:
> one primary FAT, one extended FAT.
>
> the only thing is on the primary: it's highlighted red and partman
> says "boot sector doesn't have valid information".
>
> how to proceed next?
> let's assume partman displays the correct partition entries.
> (BTW: where does partman get this info from, when it's not in the
> partition table, any more?)
>
> what happens now, when i just accept the suggested values by partman
> and press "F2" to save?
> what will be changed by this?
>
> i guess, the bottsector still won't have valid information
> afterwards, right?
>
>  thanks for any help,
>
>  philipp
>
I once lost all my partitions on my first harddisk but managed to recover
them with linux fdisk. I had linux installed on my second harddisk.  As I
guess that you don't have Linux installed you can get a Linux bootdisk at
places like http://bootdisk.com.

Start fdisk (or cfdisk if it is included) and follow the instructions. Set the
start and
end cylinder to the start and end of the disk and set the partition's system
Id to "Win 95 FAT32 (LBA)" (c). All this assumes that your (now deleted)
Windows partition covers the entire disk and was of type FAT32 LBA.
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> partman-discussion-unsubscribe@onelist.com

> the only thing is on the primary: it's highlighted red and partman
> says "boot sector doesn't have valid information".
>
> how to proceed next?
> let's assume partman displays the correct partition entries.
> (BTW: where does partman get this info from, when it's not in the
> partition table, any more?)

Have you run partman before on that HD?  According to my knowlege, partman
keep only the first part its MBR, i.e. IPL in the first sector, that's the
reason you can replace it by fdisk/mbr. But the partition table is kept
elsewhere later.

> what happens now, when i just accept the suggested values by partman
> and press "F2" to save?
> what will be changed by this?
> i guess, the bottsector still won't have valid information
> afterwards, right?

I remembered I had that warning once, it seems only format can get rid of
this warning..., not quite sure, long time ago. You can try save, no harm
anyway. then re-run partman or fdisk to see what will happen.

Fang

here's some update.
it's a bit confusing, because i have to troubleshoot the whole thing
long-distance via the telephone, myself.

he didn't inform me correctly, the first time.
so i'll explain the whole thing, again.

he has a 8.5GB HDD. there was a 6.xGB primary FATx partition on it
and a 2.xGB extended FATx partition on it.

he run MS fdisk and "deleted" all partitions. he was already about to
create some new ones, when he noticed "gosh, i didn't copy my data".

right now he hasn't done anything to the drive, yet.

the strange thing is: partitions are shown inside part.exe and MS
fdisk -> partinfo, as well!

part.exe says "boot sector doesn't have valid information".
MS fdisk says "c: system unknown".

it's possible to boot from FDD and change to C: and d: !

i wasn't successfull in stepping through various CHS values inside
part.exe by pressing "+" and "-" keys. (BTW: thanks, gabriele
trombetti!)
at all the various values partman still says "bootsector no valid
information".

so this leads me to various questions:

1) what happened exactly, when MS fdisk "deletes" partitions?
well, i thought it deletes the partition table entries inside the MBR.
but
a) why does partman show the partitions?
b) why does MS fdisk still show the partitions?

2) where is the FAT stored?
the data should still be recoverable, as long as the original FAT
isn't damaged. where exactly is it stored? does it have anything to
do with the bootsector of that partition?

3) how to recover the bootsector?
as far as i know the only way to get back the bootsector, is
formating the partition? this is no solution, obviously.
are there any other methods?

4) MS interpretation of the prim partition?
MS fdisk says "C: primary - system unknown". how come?
what does it depend on? just the bootsector? or FAT as well?

5) "sys c:"?
what would "sys c:" do? as far as i know it copies all the important
system files to the partition (command.com, io.sys, etc) and writes
the bootsector, so the partition is bootable.
is this a good idea?

6) dir c: ?
as stated earlier, it's possible to boot from FDD and then change to
c: and d:
everything is fine with extended D:
but on c: the "dir" says: invalid media type while reading from c:
(i don't know the english version, exactly ...)
what does this stand for? any fixes suggested?

7) scandisk?
could scandisk do any good?


SUMMARY: partition table seems to be OK. the only(?) problem: the
bootsector information for the partition is invalid/lost.
maybe the FAT, as well?

any hints are greatly appreciated :)

part -r -p > screwed.txt  is attached.

  philipp


http://www.tfh-berlin.de/~oeschtle/screwed.txt

--
Ranish Partition Manager       Version 2.38 Beta 1.91       March 03,
2000

HD 1 (128)  8,623M [  1,099 cyls x 255 heads x 63 sects =  17,660,160
sects ]

Problems           File                Starting         Ending
Partition
    # Type Row   System Type         Cyl Head Sect    Cyl Head Sect
Size [KB]

    0  MBR   Master Boot Record        0    0    1      0    0
1          0
    1  Pri   Unused                    0    0    2      0    0
63         31
!  2 >Pri 1 Windows FAT-32            0    1    1    783  254   63
6,297,448
    3  Pri 2 VFAT Extended LBA       784    0    1  1,098  254   63
2,530,237
    4  Ã Log Windows FAT-32          784    1    1  1,098  254   63
2,530,206
    5  Pri   Unused                1,099    0    1  1,099   74
63      2,362

Partition table details:

Problems            Starting       Ending     Starting   Number
of      Ending
    # Type R FS    Cyl Head Sct  Cyl Head Sct    sector
sectors      sector

    0  MBR   FF      0   0  1      0   0  1           0
1           0
    1  Pri   00      0   0  2      0   0 63           1
62          62
!  2 >Pri 1 0B      0   1  1    783 254 63          63  12,594,897
12,594,959
    3  Pri 2 0F    784   0  1  1,098 254 63  12,594,960   5,060,475
17,655,434
    4  Ã Log 0B    784   1  1  1,098 254 63  12,595,023   5,060,412
17,655,434
    5  Pri   00  1,099   0  1  1,099  74 63  17,655,435       4,725
17,660,159

  Problems with partition 2:

    Boot sector doesn't have valid information

Partition records exactly as they appear in MBR (EMBR):

                    Starting          Ending        Starting   Number
of
     #  HD  FS    Cyl Head Sect    Cyl Head Sect      sector
sectors
(0,0,1):
     1  80  0B      0    1    1    783  254   63          63
12,594,897
     2  00  0F    784    0    1  1,022  254   63  12,594,960
5,060,475
     3  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0           0
0
     4  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0           0
0
(784,0,1):
     1  00  0B    784    1    1     74  254   63          63
5,060,412
     2  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0           0
0
     3  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0           0
0
     4  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0           0
0


Detailed information about each partition:


--- Partition 2 ---
Type: Windows FAT-32         CHS=(0,1,1)  6,297,448 k  12,594,897
sectors

       Volume Label: ööööööööööö
          System id: öööööööö
        File system: öööööööö
       Cluster size: 123k (246s)
           FAT size: 2,071,690,107k
       Drive number: 246   Exp: 128
    Starting sector: 4,143,380,214
     Expected value: 63
  Number of sectors: 4,143,380,214
     Expected value: 12,594,897


--- Partition 4 ---
Type: Windows FAT-32         CHS=(784,1,1)  2,530,206 k  5,060,412
sectors

       Volume Label: NO NAME
          System id: MSWIN4.1
        File system: FAT32
       Cluster size: 4k (8s)
           FAT size: 2,468k
       Drive number: 128   Exp: 128
    Starting sector: 12,595,023
     Expected value: 12,595,023
  Number of sectors: 5,060,412
     Expected value: 5,060,412

> Has there been (or will there be) any further work on a version to
> support >8.4g with a save/load mbr feature?

just to clarify things:
the latest build supports HDDs >8GB
you'd have to use:
"Version 2.38 Beta 1.91 (96k) dated March 14, 2000"

i don't know about the other questions.

    philipp

--- In partman-discussion@y..., gravenhorst@b... wrote:
> > Has there been (or will there be) any further work on a version
to
> > support >8.4g with a save/load mbr feature?
>
> just to clarify things:
> the latest build supports HDDs >8GB
> you'd have to use:
> "Version 2.38 Beta 1.91 (96k) dated March 14, 2000"
>
> i don't know about the other questions.
>
>    philipp

>> philipp,
>>   Thanks for the response. I do have "Version 2.38 Beta 1.91 (96k)
>>dated March 14, 2000"
>>The .zip is 91988 bytes. The .exe is 65504 bytes. When running, the
>>date shown is 3/3/00.
>>   The 'l' and 's' options appear, but when selected, generate
>>a "Not implemented yet..." message.

>>  Version 2.37.12 (10/18/98), the <8.4 version, does support these
>>features. Unless I'm missing something, the version you referred to
>>does not.
>>  I hope no one takes my query the wrong way. I have the utmost
>>respect for M.R. for his contribution to and for those of us who
>>are 'Psuedo Computer Literate' by comparison. As I said in my 1st
>>post, I currently lack the 'education' to approach the task. So
>>much has changed since the (pre x86, Px, Win, etc) Z80 & 6502
>>days...5 kids/4 grands ago. Not a lotta time left to 'keep up'.
>>  On a personal note - ya gotta' give ol Bill credit. He is, if
>>nothing else, a marketing genius. Despite what I tell those in my
>>circle, they are convinced, computer = Win 9.x  So sad.
>>   Sorry. It was not my intent to veer off into a 'Bash Billy Boy'
>>vein. There are plenty of forums out there for that...
>> Thanks for your reply GH
Reguards,
Sam

--- In partman-discussion@y..., gravenhorst@b... wrote:
> here's some update.
> it's a bit confusing, because i have to troubleshoot the whole
thing
> long-distance via the telephone, myself.
>
> he didn't inform me correctly, the first time.
> so i'll explain the whole thing, again.
>
> he has a 8.5GB HDD. there was a 6.xGB primary FATx partition on it
> and a 2.xGB extended FATx partition on it.
>
> he run MS fdisk and "deleted" all partitions. he was already about
to
> create some new ones, when he noticed "gosh, i didn't copy my data".
>
> right now he hasn't done anything to the drive, yet.
>
> the strange thing is: partitions are shown inside part.exe and MS
> fdisk -> partinfo, as well!

>>>philipp
  DO NOT USE SCANDISK!!
>>> More to follow...
> part.exe says "boot sector doesn't have valid information".
> MS fdisk says "c: system unknown".
>
> it's possible to boot from FDD and change to C: and d: !
>
> i wasn't successfull in stepping through various CHS values inside
> part.exe by pressing "+" and "-" keys. (BTW: thanks, gabriele
> trombetti!)
> at all the various values partman still says "bootsector no valid
> information".
>
> so this leads me to various questions:
>
> 1) what happened exactly, when MS fdisk "deletes" partitions?
> well, i thought it deletes the partition table entries inside the
MBR.
> but
> a) why does partman show the partitions?
> b) why does MS fdisk still show the partitions?
>
> 2) where is the FAT stored?
> the data should still be recoverable, as long as the original FAT
> isn't damaged. where exactly is it stored? does it have anything to
> do with the bootsector of that partition?
>
> 3) how to recover the bootsector?
> as far as i know the only way to get back the bootsector, is
> formating the partition? this is no solution, obviously.
> are there any other methods?
>
> 4) MS interpretation of the prim partition?
> MS fdisk says "C: primary - system unknown". how come?
> what does it depend on? just the bootsector? or FAT as well?
>
> 5) "sys c:"?
> what would "sys c:" do? as far as i know it copies all the
important
> system files to the partition (command.com, io.sys, etc) and writes
> the bootsector, so the partition is bootable.
> is this a good idea?
>
> 6) dir c: ?
> as stated earlier, it's possible to boot from FDD and then change
to
> c: and d:
> everything is fine with extended D:
> but on c: the "dir" says: invalid media type while reading from c:
> (i don't know the english version, exactly ...)
> what does this stand for? any fixes suggested?
>
> 7) scandisk?
> could scandisk do any good?
>
>
> SUMMARY: partition table seems to be OK. the only(?) problem: the
> bootsector information for the partition is invalid/lost.
> maybe the FAT, as well?
>
> any hints are greatly appreciated :)
>
> part -r -p > screwed.txt  is attached.
>
>  philipp
>
>
> http://www.tfh-berlin.de/~oeschtle/screwed.txt
>
> --
> Ranish Partition Manager       Version 2.38 Beta 1.91       March
03,
> 2000
>
> HD 1 (128)  8,623M [  1,099 cyls x 255 heads x 63 sects =
17,660,160
> sects ]
>
> Problems           File                Starting         Ending
> Partition
>    # Type Row   System Type         Cyl Head Sect    Cyl Head Sect
> Size [KB]
>
>    0  MBR   Master Boot Record        0    0    1      0    0
> 1          0
>    1  Pri   Unused                    0    0    2      0    0
> 63         31
> !  2 >Pri 1 Windows FAT-32            0    1    1    783  254   63
> 6,297,448
>    3  Pri 2 VFAT Extended LBA       784    0    1  1,098  254   63
> 2,530,237
>    4  Ã Log Windows FAT-32          784    1    1  1,098  254   63
> 2,530,206
>    5  Pri   Unused                1,099    0    1  1,099   74
> 63      2,362
>
> Partition table details:
>
> Problems            Starting       Ending     Starting   Number
> of      Ending
>    # Type R FS    Cyl Head Sct  Cyl Head Sct    sector
> sectors      sector
>
>    0  MBR   FF      0   0  1      0   0  1           0
> 1           0
>    1  Pri   00      0   0  2      0   0 63           1
> 62          62
> !  2 >Pri 1 0B      0   1  1    783 254 63          63  12,594,897
> 12,594,959
>    3  Pri 2 0F    784   0  1  1,098 254 63  12,594,960   5,060,475
> 17,655,434
>    4  Ã Log 0B    784   1  1  1,098 254 63  12,595,023   5,060,412
> 17,655,434
>    5  Pri   00  1,099   0  1  1,099  74 63  17,655,435       4,725
> 17,660,159
>
>  Problems with partition 2:
>
>    Boot sector doesn't have valid information
>
> Partition records exactly as they appear in MBR (EMBR):
>
>                    Starting          Ending        Starting
Number
> of
>     #  HD  FS    Cyl Head Sect    Cyl Head Sect      sector
> sectors
> (0,0,1):
>     1  80  0B      0    1    1    783  254   63          63
> 12,594,897
>     2  00  0F    784    0    1  1,022  254   63  12,594,960
> 5,060,475
>     3  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0
0
> 0
>     4  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0
0
> 0
> (784,0,1):
>     1  00  0B    784    1    1     74  254   63          63
> 5,060,412
>     2  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0
0
> 0
>     3  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0
0
> 0
>     4  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0
0
> 0
>
>
> Detailed information about each partition:
>
>
> --- Partition 2 ---
> Type: Windows FAT-32         CHS=(0,1,1)  6,297,448 k  12,594,897
> sectors
>
>       Volume Label: ööööööööööö
>          System id: öööööööö
>        File system: öööööööö
>       Cluster size: 123k (246s)
>           FAT size: 2,071,690,107k
>       Drive number: 246   Exp: 128
>    Starting sector: 4,143,380,214
>     Expected value: 63
>  Number of sectors: 4,143,380,214
>     Expected value: 12,594,897
>
>
> --- Partition 4 ---
> Type: Windows FAT-32         CHS=(784,1,1)  2,530,206 k  5,060,412
> sectors
>
>       Volume Label: NO NAME
>          System id: MSWIN4.1
>        File system: FAT32
>       Cluster size: 4k (8s)
>           FAT size: 2,468k
>       Drive number: 128   Exp: 128
>    Starting sector: 12,595,023
>     Expected value: 12,595,023
>  Number of sectors: 5,060,412
>     Expected value: 5,060,412

--- In partman-discussion@y..., gravenhorst@b... wrote:
> here's some update.
> it's a bit confusing, because i have to troubleshoot the whole
thing
> long-distance via the telephone, myself.
>
> he didn't inform me correctly, the first time.
> so i'll explain the whole thing, again.
>
> he has a 8.5GB HDD. there was a 6.xGB primary FATx partition on it
> and a 2.xGB extended FATx partition on it.
>
> he run MS fdisk and "deleted" all partitions. he was already about
to
> create some new ones, when he noticed "gosh, i didn't copy my data".
>
> right now he hasn't done anything to the drive, yet.
>
> the strange thing is: partitions are shown inside part.exe and MS
> fdisk -> partinfo, as well!
>
> part.exe says "boot sector doesn't have valid information".
> MS fdisk says "c: system unknown".
>
> it's possible to boot from FDD and change to C: and d: !
>
> i wasn't successfull in stepping through various CHS values inside
> part.exe by pressing "+" and "-" keys. (BTW: thanks, gabriele
> trombetti!)
> at all the various values partman still says "bootsector no valid
> information".
>
> so this leads me to various questions:
>
> 1) what happened exactly, when MS fdisk "deletes" partitions?
> well, i thought it deletes the partition table entries inside the
MBR.
> but
> a) why does partman show the partitions?
> b) why does MS fdisk still show the partitions?
>
> 2) where is the FAT stored?
> the data should still be recoverable, as long as the original FAT
> isn't damaged. where exactly is it stored? does it have anything to
> do with the bootsector of that partition?
>
> 3) how to recover the bootsector?
> as far as i know the only way to get back the bootsector, is
> formating the partition? this is no solution, obviously.
> are there any other methods?
>
> 4) MS interpretation of the prim partition?
> MS fdisk says "C: primary - system unknown". how come?
> what does it depend on? just the bootsector? or FAT as well?
>
> 5) "sys c:"?
> what would "sys c:" do? as far as i know it copies all the
important
> system files to the partition (command.com, io.sys, etc) and writes
> the bootsector, so the partition is bootable.
> is this a good idea?
>
> 6) dir c: ?
> as stated earlier, it's possible to boot from FDD and then change
to
> c: and d:
> everything is fine with extended D:
> but on c: the "dir" says: invalid media type while reading from c:
> (i don't know the english version, exactly ...)
> what does this stand for? any fixes suggested?
>
> 7) scandisk?
> could scandisk do any good?
>
>
> SUMMARY: partition table seems to be OK. the only(?) problem: the
> bootsector information for the partition is invalid/lost.
> maybe the FAT, as well?
>
> any hints are greatly appreciated :)
>
> part -r -p > screwed.txt  is attached.
>
>  philipp
>
>
> http://www.tfh-berlin.de/~oeschtle/screwed.txt
>
> --
> Ranish Partition Manager       Version 2.38 Beta 1.91       March
03,
> 2000
>
> HD 1 (128)  8,623M [  1,099 cyls x 255 heads x 63 sects =
17,660,160
> sects ]
>
> Problems           File                Starting         Ending
> Partition
>    # Type Row   System Type         Cyl Head Sect    Cyl Head Sect
> Size [KB]
>
>    0  MBR   Master Boot Record        0    0    1      0    0
> 1          0
>    1  Pri   Unused                    0    0    2      0    0
> 63         31
> !  2 >Pri 1 Windows FAT-32            0    1    1    783  254   63
> 6,297,448
>    3  Pri 2 VFAT Extended LBA       784    0    1  1,098  254   63
> 2,530,237
>    4  Ã Log Windows FAT-32          784    1    1  1,098  254   63
> 2,530,206
>    5  Pri   Unused                1,099    0    1  1,099   74
> 63      2,362
>
> Partition table details:
>
> Problems            Starting       Ending     Starting   Number
> of      Ending
>    # Type R FS    Cyl Head Sct  Cyl Head Sct    sector
> sectors      sector
>
>    0  MBR   FF      0   0  1      0   0  1           0
> 1           0
>    1  Pri   00      0   0  2      0   0 63           1
> 62          62
> !  2 >Pri 1 0B      0   1  1    783 254 63          63  12,594,897
> 12,594,959
>    3  Pri 2 0F    784   0  1  1,098 254 63  12,594,960   5,060,475
> 17,655,434
>    4  Ã Log 0B    784   1  1  1,098 254 63  12,595,023   5,060,412
> 17,655,434
>    5  Pri   00  1,099   0  1  1,099  74 63  17,655,435       4,725
> 17,660,159
>
>  Problems with partition 2:
>
>    Boot sector doesn't have valid information
>
> Partition records exactly as they appear in MBR (EMBR):
>
>                    Starting          Ending        Starting
Number
> of
>     #  HD  FS    Cyl Head Sect    Cyl Head Sect      sector
> sectors
> (0,0,1):
>     1  80  0B      0    1    1    783  254   63          63
> 12,594,897
>     2  00  0F    784    0    1  1,022  254   63  12,594,960
> 5,060,475
>     3  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0
0
> 0
>     4  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0
0
> 0
> (784,0,1):
>     1  00  0B    784    1    1     74  254   63          63
> 5,060,412
>     2  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0
0
> 0
>     3  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0
0
> 0
>     4  00  00      0    0    0      0    0    0
0
> 0
>
>
> Detailed information about each partition:
>
>
> --- Partition 2 ---
> Type: Windows FAT-32         CHS=(0,1,1)  6,297,448 k  12,594,897
> sectors
>
>       Volume Label: ööööööööööö
>          System id: öööööööö
>        File system: öööööööö
>       Cluster size: 123k (246s)
>           FAT size: 2,071,690,107k
>       Drive number: 246   Exp: 128
>    Starting sector: 4,143,380,214
>     Expected value: 63
>  Number of sectors: 4,143,380,214
>     Expected value: 12,594,897
>
>
> --- Partition 4 ---
> Type: Windows FAT-32         CHS=(784,1,1)  2,530,206 k  5,060,412
> sectors
>
>       Volume Label: NO NAME
>          System id: MSWIN4.1
>        File system: FAT32
>       Cluster size: 4k (8s)
>           FAT size: 2,468k
>       Drive number: 128   Exp: 128
>    Starting sector: 12,595,023
>     Expected value: 12,595,023
>  Number of sectors: 5,060,412
>     Expected value: 5,060,412

>>Sorry 'bout the "centre" post. Scandisk SUCKS!
>> I had a simular problem a while back. From my experience your
Cluster size: 123k (246s)is the problem. I had to use Norton 7.x or
8.x at the disk edit level to correct it good enough to recover
most/all? of the partition. I can't remember the exact steps, but
between partmgr and norton I was able to re-access the pri partition
and get the data back. AFAIK dos does not understand 123k for cluster
size or at least cant find a valid system because the reference
points are skewed. Maybe I was lucky. Try backing up the extended
part data then use V2.37 's' feature to save [filename] your present
(damaged) mbr. It cant see passed 8.4g but your pri is less than that
and your extended data has been already accessed and recovered.
Then 'play' with values in nortons 'boot sector area' until you get
values (Cluster size=128k) that partmgr likes and dos accepts without
errors. You should be able to restore your original (damaged) mbr via
2.37 with l [filename] as many times as you wish.

Good Luck
SAM

>      Cluster size: 123k (246s)
>          FAT size: 2,071,690,107k
>      Drive number: 246   Exp: 128

>  Starting sector: 4,143,380,214
>  Expected value: 63

> Number of sectors: 4,143,380,214
> Expected value: 12,594,897


Hi, Phillip:

you have three values differ from the Exp, expected value.  Run 2.37.12,
highlight the partition, press Enter,  enter the setup page. you might be
able to change them back manually, or by press F5 key at that edit page to
change it to expected value via the program. and save it to MBR and to a
file.


Good luck.

Fang

On  2 Feb 01 at 5:30, swguest@... wrote:

>  DO NOT USE SCANDISK!!
205 lines of quoted material removed !!!

    "When replying to a message, include enough original material to
     be understood but no more. It is extremely bad form to simply
     reply to a message by including  all the previous message: edit
     out all the irrelevant material." (RFC 1855, 1995:3)

Btw: Which is the valid/current list address?
1:  <partman-discussion@yahoogroups.com>
2:  <partman@...>
3:  <partman-discussion@egroups.com>

All the best,
Bjorn Simonsen

<Bjorn.Simonsen@c...> wrote:

> Btw: Which is the valid/current list address?
> 1:  <partman-discussion@y...>
> 2:  <partman@l...>
> 3:  <partman-discussion@egroups.com>

the correct answer is 1)
uhhm ,ooops. can you read it?

well, just access:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/partman-discussion/
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX


Project home:      http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part
Post message:      partman-discussion@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe:         partman-discussion-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe:       partman-discussion-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
List owner:        partman-discussion-owner@yahoogroups.com
URL to this page:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/partman-discussion


some little history:
a) whole discussion started on listbot
b) moved to egroups - much better platforom
c) egroups merged with the yahoo empire

so the latest and correct addresses are the yahoo-ones i posted above.

  philipp

Hi I emailed on the the old mailing list about my probablems with
partman ruining my hard drive but even if you don't read the old list
basically the situaution is that my hard disk is unreadable.

I'll just decribe the cause symptoms again so I don't get people
saying that a low level format (LLF) isn't messeasry and I don't know
what I'm talking about.

Basically after a lot of messing around trying to repair my drive
after partman ruined it - I finally gave up. I "fdisk"ed a few times
deleting and recreating partitions and then used an old program by
the name of DMDOS or Disk Manager (I think it came originally as part
of Nuts and Bolts by McAfee) - it's a DOS program and it found old
partitions and asked if it should recover them I thought WTF and
hit "yes" it displayed the same message again so I hit yes, it kept
on displaying it so I pressed no about 20 times until, it finally
disapeared. Upon reboot I was presented with the message "To many
logical drives, drives beyong drive Z will be ignored" it then
days "Starting MS-DOS . . ." and hangs.

Rebooting to floppy revelas there are 24 drives (C to Z) all which
display "Drive not ready" when you try and exmaine them. (I think BTW
that the reason is that there are say 30 partitions - something DOS
can't deal with because it hasn't anough drive letters and most of
the drive 2GB is in (say) the 29th partition beyong DOS's range -
this is unexpected and therefore no program can deal with it).

Now for the strange part:
  - fdisk just cycles through all the drives displaying an error
message until you press abort at which case it aborts (obviously)
  - partman displays an int13 error (in a red error box) and exits
  - format just exits without diplaying anything
  - scandisk doesn't start

  etc. etc.

  Basically I'm pretty convinced I need to do a low level format to
repair it. the probalem is that I don't know how to access it. It's
an old motherboard (the bios is from 1994, it's a pentium90 in case
your interested and I don't have the cash to throw it out and buy a
new one) and an unmarked (OEM?) 2GB hard disk.

  So - How do I preform a LLF?

  merlin
  (merlinman@...)

Hi Merlin!

>  Basically I'm pretty convinced I need to do a low level format to
> repair it. the probalem is that I don't know how to access it. It's
> an old motherboard (the bios is from 1994, it's a pentium90 in case
> your interested and I don't have the cash to throw it out and buy a
> new one) and an unmarked (OEM?) 2GB hard disk.

>  So - How do I preform a LLF?

I don't know if it's necessary to perform a low-level format, but if you
need to do it Maxtor has a program that works with other harddisks as well.
http://www.maxtor.com/SoftwareDownload/main/llfutil.exe
But I can't guarantee that it's working, you can even destroy very old
harddisks with a low-level format.
Why didn't you try to delete all partitions with partition manager? What
exactliy did partman do that "ruined" your drive, as it can only destroy the
partition table so that other programs have difficulties with it.

Thorsten

----- Original Message -----
From: m s <merlinman@...>
To: Rob Lemley <rclemley@...>; <partman@...>
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 09:05 AM
Subject: Re: partman buggered up my hdd.


[ . . . ]

> Can YOU tell me then, as an expert, after 5 years of using the same hard
> drive and frequently filling it up to the max, never repartitioning it and
> regularily running scandisk how I could have had all that time an invalid
> partition - remember this was a single partition drive of 2GB the size of
> the disk - the disk size even matched up to the partitions size.

Probably no one can tell you that now because all of the information
is gone.  The partition table before and after and the values you
entered.  The exact text of the error messages along the way...
I don't think we know what bios and drive you're using.
(The partman docs also recommend saving your partition table dump.
In the latest beta of partman, this is accomplished by saving the
partition table in text format and printing it out because the
binary save/restore mbr/partition table does not work.)

The thing is, AFAI can tell, partman is just reading and writing the
raw disk.  Especially true if you boot partman directly from the floppy
diskette with no DOS.  So it seems that if partman cannot read the
disk, there might be an error in the HDD itself or the bios.

Also, even if the partition table was wrong, as long as DOS/Win95
could get into the partition, then a partition table error might not
bother DOS/WIN95.  There might have been bad blocks on the disk
in a spot not checked by scandisk. . . . or??? . . .

In other words, all anyone can do is guess because there is no
"hard" data about your situation.  If you're lucky, someone might
recognize the symptoms or experienced a similar problem before and
can give you some ideas.  But without all the facts it is
very difficult to get an accurate diagnosis of your situation.

There's supposed to be a pretty good program "SpinRite"
http://grc.com/spinrite.htm that's advertised to be alot
better than scandisk for detecting bad blocks, etc.
Not free, commercial software. But hell, for 89.00 you
can go out and buy a nice new multi-GB hdd.

And you know, if you sign on to an email list for a freeware
like partman with hundreds of devoted and grateful users,
(including the developers of XOSL http://www.xosl.org, a
really nice multi-booter) and make a post blaming the software
for your drive problems,and don't give a *complete* description
of the process that led to your problems, you gotta expect that
folks have to be a little bit hard on you ... kind of like
your "initiation". :)

Welcome to partman!



_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

[THIS IS FROM MERLIN)

> And you know, if you sign on to an email list for a freeware
> like partman with hundreds of devoted and grateful users,
> (including the developers of XOSL http://www.xosl.org, a
> really nice multi-booter) and make a post blaming the software
> for your drive problems,and don't give a *complete* description
> of the process that led to your problems, you gotta expect that
> folks have to be a little bit hard on you ... kind of like
> your "initiation". :)

My original post about 2/3 weeks ago gave a full explanation of what
went
wrong and what I did. My problem wasn't so much what partman did to my
invalid partitions as to what it it after I formatted with fdisk i.e.
displaying my drive as 23MB (at the top of the main screen) something
which
i still can't see how to change. Does anyone know how to force
partman (in
case I ever manage to LLF my hdd - something no one can tell me how
to do)
to realise my drive's 2GB - simply creating a 2GB partition just
results in
an "invalid partition table" again. As I've written already I think
partman's orignal probalem was it thinking my drive was 23MB -
something
which NO other program (fdisk, presizer (also freeware) etc.) did -
it's for
this reason that I blamed partman and still am.

merlin
(also giftotmankind@...)



--- In partman-discussion@y..., "Rob Lemley" <rclemley@y...> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: m s <merlinman@m...>
> To: Rob Lemley <rclemley@y...>; <partman@l...>
> Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 09:05 AM
> Subject: Re: partman buggered up my hdd.
>
>
> [ . . . ]
>
> > Can YOU tell me then, as an expert, after 5 years of using the
same hard
> > drive and frequently filling it up to the max, never
repartitioning it and
> > regularily running scandisk how I could have had all that time an
invalid
> > partition - remember this was a single partition drive of 2GB the
size of
> > the disk - the disk size even matched up to the partitions size.
>
> Probably no one can tell you that now because all of the information
> is gone.  The partition table before and after and the values you
> entered.  The exact text of the error messages along the way...
> I don't think we know what bios and drive you're using.
> (The partman docs also recommend saving your partition table dump.
> In the latest beta of partman, this is accomplished by saving the
> partition table in text format and printing it out because the
> binary save/restore mbr/partition table does not work.)
>
> The thing is, AFAI can tell, partman is just reading and writing the
> raw disk.  Especially true if you boot partman directly from the
floppy
> diskette with no DOS.  So it seems that if partman cannot read the
> disk, there might be an error in the HDD itself or the bios.
>
> Also, even if the partition table was wrong, as long as DOS/Win95
> could get into the partition, then a partition table error might not
> bother DOS/WIN95.  There might have been bad blocks on the disk
> in a spot not checked by scandisk. . . . or??? . . .
>
> In other words, all anyone can do is guess because there is no
> "hard" data about your situation.  If you're lucky, someone might
> recognize the symptoms or experienced a similar problem before and
> can give you some ideas.  But without all the facts it is
> very difficult to get an accurate diagnosis of your situation.
>
> There's supposed to be a pretty good program "SpinRite"
> http://grc.com/spinrite.htm that's advertised to be alot
> better than scandisk for detecting bad blocks, etc.
> Not free, commercial software. But hell, for 89.00 you
> can go out and buy a nice new multi-GB hdd.
>
> And you know, if you sign on to an email list for a freeware
> like partman with hundreds of devoted and grateful users,
> (including the developers of XOSL http://www.xosl.org, a
> really nice multi-booter) and make a post blaming the software
> for your drive problems,and don't give a *complete* description
> of the process that led to your problems, you gotta expect that
> folks have to be a little bit hard on you ... kind of like
> your "initiation". :)
>
> Welcome to partman!
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

--- In partman-discussion@y..., gifttomankind@y... wrote:
> Hi I emailed on the the old mailing list......
  <snip>
  Happy now Bjorn?
   I have a couple of suggestions. Scandisk is NOT one of them. More
on that later. As mentioned in some of the other posts, I too would
suspect a firmware/hardware problem. Again not enough info (at least
in the post I read) to tell for sure. A 1994 P-90 class box should
have an onboard IDE controller.  If you have access to an ISA IDE
controller or an IDE interface card that has it's on onboard bios
such as one from Promise, you could try one of these. You will have
to be able to disable the built in IDE controller in the BIOS setup.
Have you tried any other drive on this box? Or this drive in a box
known to be in working order?
   Until you can access the drive without errors, I know of no utility
that will allow any successful partitioning or formatting, low level
or otherwise. The utility from Steve Gibson, Spinrite, is a great
program for setting the best interleave and diagnosing the media on
the eletromagnetic level (determines failed or failing sectors).
Thats the old bad sector map you used to see on MFM and RLL interface
drives.
   Todays drives are already at 1:1 interleave so that's one of the
arguements for not needing low level formatting. The guy is
brilliant, and has some good reading material on his site www.grc.com
   My last suggestion is to try a disk editing utility. Peter Norton
has one in every version of his Norton Utilities I've looked at. This
guy is also one of the great pioneers of the stuff most folks take
for granted (or are oblivious to) these days. There are other byte
level editors out there. Do a search on zdnet, cnet, etc. You may
have to go as far as 'Zeroing Out' sectors 0 and 1 and trying to
access the drive with partman after that.
   I had an ISA IDE  in an old x86 class box act 'flaky' first because
the ground screw was attached, and another because it wasn't. Never
figured that out.....
   Oh yeah, scandisk. If you 'repair' with this, be assured you can
loose stuff you could have otherwise saved by backing up first. You
DO back up don't you??? <Grin>. If (when) scandisk repairs errors,
called crosslinked files and lost clusters, it truncates them,
renames them to file***.chk and moves them to the root directory. It
is up to you to determine what they were .txt, .ddl .com .exe etc and
restore them. If it happens to do this to files that the registry
looks for, or, heaven forbid, esential OS files...Well you can see
the mess it can make.
  My personal opinion is that your blame of partman for the problems
you have is misplaced. It has shown to me to be a very stable and
concicely written piece of work. Best of luck.
73
Sam

Hello MERLIN,
I will try to help You, no problem there, but You got to provide some
more help. You do the following things and report back, if You want,
mail me directly   sgutman@...   ANYTHING YOU DO IS ON
YOUR OWN RISK :
1. Does the BIOS recognise the disk ? Whats is the message ?
2. What happens when You run 'part.exe' ? What error messages ?
     If partman presents You with a table, what is it ?
     Do not mail any attachments, I will not open them !!!!!!
3. Boot the PC and run 'part.exe'. If the following
     "" - partman displays an int13 error (in a red error box) and exits ""
     appears again shut down the machine (power off) and go into the setup
     (BIOS)  and check how the BIOS sees the harddisk and mark it down.
     I would also like to know what choices You have there(CHS, large,
     LBA,...). Shut down, pull the cables from the HDD, reboot,
     shut down (power off), reattach the cables, and then reboot
     and run 'part.exe' to see if anything changed.
     You can try first just to disable the HDD in the BIOS, power off for a
     while, reboot whithout HDD, power off for a while, reboot, reenable,
     power off for a while, reboot but it better be a EIDE disk for this
     (YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN ON THIS).

I do not know Your setup, I take it that there is no diskmanager in play
here, or other  unusual boards, (no SCSI). Some guys might recognize
the habits of the motherboard, if You provide the make and model ????

I fully agree what Reinhard Bellmann says, if You are willing to get a
ramfloppy from Kent Robotti we can try with linux fdisk to see if it will
recognize
the HDD, that will definitly be safe. I will guide You through it, show  how
to do it, You need a DOS OS to make the disk and download it. Let me
know first, I do not want to waste my time chasing the brise. With that floppy
we can also 'zero' the MBR. The ramfloppy needs 8mb RAM to boot....
I live in Central Europe and are only on the PC in the evenings. Thats got
to be enough for now
see You                   samuel

It appears that only the version number has changed from 2.38 beta to
2.40 released:


http://www.ranish.com/
http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part/

"Version 2.40 is the same as 2.38 Beta, which has proven to be very
stable by having no bug reports nor any other problems for almost a
year."

"Download Version 2.40.00 (96k) dated February 8, 2001."

Also, the mailing list link now points
to "http://groups.yahoo.com/group/partman-discussion".

I haven't downloaded 2.40 yet.

--
Rob

I am wanting to try this program out. . . .

Can I use this program in a fashion similar to Ghost?

If I decide to use this program would it be better to just wipe the
OS clean and start fresh with an empty hard drive?

Should the partitions be equal in size?  eg I want half to store a
clean copy of an OS to only be used to copy over to the 2nd partition.

> I am wanting to try this program out. . . .
> Can I use this program in a fashion similar to Ghost?

well, ranish partition manager is still under development. very
advanced features as partition resizing don't really work
satisfyingly, right now (i'd say). see the docs on partman and the
included readme.txt!

i suggest for those kind of purposes you stick to ghost.

> If I decide to use this program would it be better to just wipe the
> OS clean and start fresh with an empty hard drive?

*I*'d always(!) prefer the clean way. you never know...

summary:

* AS PARTITION MANAGER:
use ranish partman

* AS BOOTMANAGER:
use either ranish bootmanager or xosl (ranish partman is included in
xosl). see http://www.xosl.org/ and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xosl for further information.

* TO CLONE AND IMAGE:
use standards compatible tools as "ghost". beware: many of those
tools might screw up your partitions and system, as they don't comply
with general standards!

happy installing!

  philipp

PS:
i'll include the latest readme, here. the others might be interested,
as well:


===START==>
    Ranish Partition Manager        Version 2.40.00         February
08, 2001

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
--------

       CONTENTS

    I. RELEASE NOTES

   II. KEYS AND FUNCTIONS REFERENCE

	 - Keys reference
  	 - Installing boot manager
  	 - Installing patch fot booting NT, DOS, etc. from partitions
above 2G
  	 - Resizing partitions (Please, READ this section - it is
important!!!)

  III. WARRANTY, COPYRIGHTS, AND REGISTRATION

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
--------

  I. RELEASE NOTES

     First of all, I suggest this version only to the EXPERIENCED
users.

     Version (2.40) is the same as version 2.38 beta 1.91. I simply had
  renamed the program since it was working without any problems or
bugs
  for almost a year and appears to be very stable.

     This version is the latest version of Partition Manager. There is
  no other "full" version in exsistance (I wish I had). This version
is a
  fully functional shareware. Even if you don't register it you still
get
  all the functionality of the program. However, if you found part.exe
a
  handy tool and would like to register I would prefer to get a
postcard
  postcard of your town, or even better, your college if you are a
student.

     This version supports disks of any size and up to 4 primary
partitions.
  Unfortunately, it does not support 30 primary partitions as it was
in the
  previous version (you can download ver 2.37 from my web site). I am
planning
  to add support for  more than 4 primary partitions, but it is taking
longer
  than I hoped.

     If you need to have better boot manager than comes with part.exe,
  please, check out XOSL at http://www.xosl.org. If you have not seen
it before
  you will be impressed when you do.

     If you have any questions regarding disk partitioning and
installing
  various operating system, please, post them to the partition manager
mailing
  list:
         http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/partman-discussion  or

         to the newsgroup for the appropriate operating system

     Only if you have confirmed bug reports concerning part.exe
program itself,
  send the to me, othervise I urge you to seek help at one of the
newsgroups
  or partition manager mailing list. I couldn't possibly answer
everybody who
  needs help with partitioning. Your messages would pile up for months
until
  I could get to them them. Therefore, please,

   - Read Partition Manager Primer, Help and FAQs and this README
file !!! -

  The newest version of the program and its documentation could be
found at:

     http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part


  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------
    Note 1: There is an older version of this program (version
2.37.xx) that
    you will find on my home page. The version 2.37 has some features
that this
    version (2.38) doesn't have implemented yet, however it is limited
to disks
    with size of 8G. Please, bear with me and wait until the new
version will be
    able to do all that: create more than 4 primary partitions,
customisable
    boot menu, passwords, etc... I am working on it at my best...
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------
    Note 2: If you are using a memory manager (like emm386.exe or
qemm386.sys)
    and you don't have any DPMI host running (for instance Windows 3.x
or Win95
    provide DPMI services, or 32rtm.exe that comes with Borland is a
DPMI host)
    then upon running Partition Manager you will get the following
message:

	 "CPU is running in protected mode, but DPMI is not available."

    In this case you will need to run CWSDPMI.EXE before the Partition
Manager.
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------

  II. KEYS AND FUNCTIONS REFERENCE

  Run "part" without options to start GUI.
  Run "part -p" to print partition table.
  Run "part -p -r" to print detailed information about all partitions.
  Run "part -d 2 -p" to print information about the second hard drive.

  When you get into the GUI the following keys are functional now:

    Use Arrow keys, End, Home, PgUp, PgDn, and Tab to move around the
table.

    B - toggles Boot flag on/off - selects active partition (marked
with '>')

    H - Hide / Unhide - changes file system type for FAT partitions
and NTFS.

    C - Copy partition

    D - Duplicate entire disk

    S and L - Save and Load MBR - do not work yet. To save information
about
              partitions, please, run "part -p -r" and then print the
output.

    INS - Changes file system type. When you press it the list of all
known
          partitions appears. You can use first characters of file
system
          name for quich search or hit INS again to enter hexadecimal
code
          of the file system.

             To create a new partition you simply have to move the
cursor to
          the unused space, press INS and select partition type (i.e.
FAT-32).
          Then, if you don't want to give it all free space, you may
change its
          starting and ending cylinders. You don't have to worry about
heads
          and sectors, because partition manager will take care of it.

             After you created a new partition you will have to save
partition
          table (F2), format this partition and then reboot computer
from a
          setup floppy to install a new OS, or use command sys.com to
install
          system files manually.

    DEL - Clears record in the table, but doesn't delete partition on
the disk.
          All changes that you are doing are in memory and will not be
saved to
          the disk until you press F2.

    F2 - Saves partition table to the disk. By writing new partition
information
         to MBR and all Extended partition records (EMBRs). If some of
the
         records are invalid additional dialog box will popup and warn
you.
         You can press ESC and fix all errors before saving.

    F3 - Undo. This key simply rereads all partition information from
the disk.

    F4 - Change display modes between Cylinder Head Sector (CHS) mode
and
         Logical Block Addressing (LBA) mode.

    F5 - Switches to the next disk. Alternatively, you can start
program with
         the option "-d 2" then it will go directly to the second disk.

    V  - Verifies partition or unused space for bad sectors. If there
are bad
         sectors on the partition the function will display list of
the first
         nine bad sectors and exit. If you verified entire  disk and
there is
         no bad sectors you can use Quick Format option when you format
         partitions, which will save you a lot of time.

    F - Formats FAT-16 and FAT-32 partitions. Currently there are no
options
        for this function, but I will add more in the future (
volume_label,
        fat_size, root_size, cluster_size, etc... )

    X - Toggles Primary/Logical flag on the partition

    A - Install Partition Manager on floppy such that you could boot
it without
        any operating system and go directly into Partition Manager.
Optionally,
        you could have DOS/Windows installed on a floppy and boot it
by default,
        and load Partition Manager (bypassing OS) only if 'Ctrl' key
is pressed.

        For instance, I put Partition Manager on the first NT 4.0
setup floppy,
        so that by default it boots NT Setup, and if I press and
hold 'Ctrl'
        while booting it goes directly to Partition Manager screen.

        (Note that if you use this feature you should not compress
PART.EXE by
         any executable file compressor, such as PKLITE).

    ENTER - invokes specific setup functions for each file system.
Currently
            there are two setup modules. One for Initial Program
Loader (IPL),
            which resides in MBR, and the other for FAT-16 and FAT-32
file
            systems.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------

  Setup options for IPL (Initial Program Loader - executable code in
the MBR)

    First option tells which IPL currently resides in MBR. The choices
are:

         - Standard IPL - this one comes with MS-DOS 6.22 fdisk.exe,
selecting
                          this IPL is equivalent to
running "fdisk /mbr"

         - Unknown IPL  - your current IPL, which Partition Manager
cannot
                          recognize. It could be IPL that comes with
Win95,
                          LILO that comes with Linux, or even some
older
                          version of one that comes with Partition
Manager.

         - Boot Manager - once Boot Manager is selected you have to
set which
                          of the interfaces you want to use:

              - Compact - this choice will install only IPL: Initial
Program
                          Loader - executable code that resides in MBR
along
                          with the partition table.
                            This little program (446 bytes) that is
smaller
                          than one sector (512 bytes) fits into MBR.
It doesn't
                          have as much functions as the GUI version of
Boot
                          Manager, but it still has more of them than
some of
                          the existing boot managers (see description
below).

           - Text 25x80 - this version of boot manager has text mode
menu driven
                          interface. It doesn't have mouse support and
cool
                          video effects, but it has all advanced
functinality
                          of the boot manager. And it is definitely
faster than
                          the GUI version.

          - GUI 640x480 - same as previous one, but it has graphics
and mouse
                          support and takes several seconds to load.
                          (this one is not finished yet)

       If you want to use "Text 25x80" or "GUI" boot menu you have to
create a
    small (couple of megs) partition for the Boot Manager (type 0xF0).

       That partition could be located anywhere on the disk and could
be either
    primary partition or a logical disk inside extended partition.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------

  Options for Compact Boot Manager:

     Check for boot viruses - when enabled it instructs boot manager to
               check interrupt vectors 0 to 1Ch (Keyboard, Timer,
Disk, ... )
               and 4Ah and 70h (Alarm and Real-Time Clock) for the
valid
               adddress pinting to BIOS. If any of them point below
BIOS
               memory to the conventional RAM the IPL will show warning

                    " Virus! _"

               and wait until you press Enter. This gives you a chance
to
               turn off the computer and run antivirus program from a
clean
               floppy disk. However, not only viruses hook onto the
interrupt
               vectors. For example, some old SCSI adapters place
their code
               on top of conventional memory and point disk interrupt
vector
               to it. In this case you have to disable virus check.

     Boot Manager's timeout - this option specifies how much time boot
manager
               will wait before it gives control to operating system.
When
               BIOS loads boot manager from the first sector on disk
(MBR)
               and gives control to it, boot manager displays the
prompt
               similar to this:

                    "Booting HD1/3 ..."

                 It means that boot manager is about to load operating
system
               from Partition 3 on Hard Disk 1. At this prompt you can
either
               wait timeout's second or press ESC to load OS
immediately. If
               you hit keys '1-4' or 'A', instead of booting Partition
3 it
               will boot from another partition or from the 'A' drive.

                 After you make your choice boot manager will save your
               selection back to MBR, so that it will use it next time.
               However it will not save it if you choose 'A'.

                 Note that if you install boot manager's IPL you can
change
               boot sequence in BIOS to "C:,A:" so that your computer
will
               always start to boot from C: and it will not start from
the
               infected floppy by accident. If YOU want to boot from
floppy
               you would simply press 'A' at the boot manager's prompt.

                 If your BIOS has boot sector write protection it
might give
               you warning, that somebody is trying to write to MBR.
Obviously
               if you want to use boot manager you have to disable
that write
               protection.

                 Also, you can press TAB to boot from the second hard
drive
               or SPACE to stop and wait for your choice.

                 All other keys will cause boot manager to load OS and
let it
               interpret that key. For example, you can press F8 or F4
when
               booting Windows 95 to have it display its boot menu
(F8) or load
               previous version of MS-DOS (F4).

                If you pressed SPACE or there was an error loading
boot sector
               for some OS boot manager will stop with the following
prompt and
               wait for your input:

                    "Booting HD1/_"

                 The choices you make here are similar to those on the
running
               dots' prompt:
                               1-4 - boot from another partition
                                 A - boot from the floppy drive A:
                               TAB - boot from the next hard drive

                 However, if you keep entering wrong keys for 1960
times at a
               row IPL will get tired of you and will boot last valid
choice.
               Just kidding, it won't get tired, but it will boot your
system
               even if a book lies on the keyboard and nobody is in
the office
               to take it off. Very usefull thing for the servers, and
delay is
               only a minute.

     Default boot choice - this option lets you specify the partition
that you
               want boot manager to boot by default no matter what the
user
               have selected last time. For example, if your kids play
on your
               computer you may set it to Windows 95, then if you are
not home
               it will always boot Windows 95, even though last time
you chose
               to boot from the Linux partition.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------

      If you choose "Text 25x80" boot manager interface then you could
use the
    following keys:
                                Space - stop and wait for the user's
input
                                  ESC - boot highlighted choice
without delay
                                   A  - boot from the floppy disk
                                   0  - run partition manager
                                  1-9 - select another menu choice
                                Enter - boot highlighted choice
without delay

    All other keys will be passed to the booting OS.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------

    Settings for FAT file systems. There are three values that you can
set in
  FAT-16/FAT-32 boot sector.

       Starting sector - its value should correspond to starting
sector (hit F4)
             of the partition for the primary partitions and is 63 for
logical
             drives. If you want to turn logical drive into a bootable
primary
             partition among other things you will need to change this
value.

       Drive number - you need to edit this option if you want to boot
DOS
              or Windows from the second hard drive. This number must
be set
              to 128 (80h) for the first hard drive and 129 (81h) for
the
              second. Also, note that you have to hide all primary FAT
              partitions on the first hard drive in order to boot DOS
or
              Windows 95 from the second.

       Partition size - this one is the most interesting number for
us. It
             tells us how many sectors there is in the partition. If
we make
             it smaller DOS (or Windows 95) will think that the
partition is
             smaller, thus we can shrink partitions (see below).

       Hint: if you press 'X' all three, starting sector, drive
number, and
             the partition size, will be set to their expected values.

       The final FAT-16 option is a patch for DOS boot sector - it
resolves
            the problem when DOS cannot boot from the partitions over
2G from
            the beginning of the disk. In addition to this, it allows
you to
            dual boot MS-DOS and OSR2, which was not possible before,
since
            OSR2's FAT-16 boot sector has bugs. Press "F6" to install
the patch,
            then choose OS that you wish to run and press F2 to save
changes
            to the boot sector.

            The patch was tested with MS-DOS 6.22, PC-DOS 7.00, DR-DOS
7.02
            Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98 (Aug98), and Windows NT 4.0
(SP0-5).


  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------

   Installing NT to partitions above 2G from the beginning of disk.

	 1. Prepare empty space or primary FAT-16 partition for NT.
	 2. Hide any other primary FAT-12 / FAT-16 partitions.
	 3. Boot from the NT Setup Floppy Disk #1
	 4. When NT asks whether you want FAT or NTFS file system
choose FAT.
	 5. Let NT copy all the files from the CD-ROM.

	 6. Upon the reboot run Partition Manager and install special
patch for
	    Windows NT into FAT-16's boot sector. To do that first
select NT's
	    partition and press Enter, then press F6 to install patch,
then,
	    in the dialog box choose "Windows NT" and finally press F2
to save
	    changes to the boot sector.

	 7. For the first time reboot from NT partition while holding
down
	    'Ctrl' key. (This will load alternative NT loader "$LDR$").
	    Let NT finish the setup procedure and ask you to reboot.

	 8. Reboot computer. Everything should work now.

    If you need to install NT 4.0 above 4G then you must either have
SP5
    or get at least files "NTDETECT.COM" and "NTLDR" from SP5 and
update
    them on the hard drive after the first reboot.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------

   In order to RESIZE (shrink) FAT partition you have to do the
following steps:

      1. Defragment the partition. This will bring all the files to the
         beginning of partition. If you use DEFRAG.EXE under Windows 95
         you have to select option "Advanced / Consolidate free space."
         Under Windows 98 uncheck "Settings / Rearrange files ... "

      2. You have to change partition size in TWO places: in the
partition
         table on top and in the boot sector on the bottom. (In the
later
         versions resize will be, obviously, done automatically).
Anyhow,
         first you have to change partition size in the partition
table. Then
         press ENTER to go into boot sector screen. Change the size,
but make
         sure it does not drop below the minimum partition size.

            There are several other numbers. Green number is the total
space
            occupied by files in the partition. Minumum size
calculated from
            the location of the last cluster on the disk - you may not
make
            partition smaller than this number, because if you do that
file
            is going to be outside of the partition and windows is
going to
            crush. The third number, maximum partition size, is
calculated
            from the size of FAT tables - the larger is FAT the more
clusters
            you can have on the disk. Since we cannot change size of
the FAT
            nor cluster size with this version of the program, we have
to
            accept that limitation. However, there is an option to
format
            which lets you create large FAT in advance so that you can
enlarge
            the partition later.

      3. Save all the changes you've made and reboot computer. Then
run some
         sort of diagnistic utility, such as SCANDISK or NDD to check
that
         everything is ok before it is too late :). On FAT-32 it will
always
         report incorrect amount of free space, but this is normal,
since we
         did change that number.

     That's all. I hope to get the real resize procedure soon - then
it will
  be much easier to do this sort of things.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
--------

  III. WARRANTY, COPYRIGHTS, AND SHAREWARE REGISTRATION

    WARRANTY: There is absolutely NO WARRANTY attached to this
program. You
  should use it only at your own risk. However, there is an open
source code
  that is available on my home page, so you can look at it to know
what it
  does and compile it yourself if you don't trust the executable.

    DISTRIBUTION: You can redistribute this program free of charge as
long as
  you do not modify any of the files included in the package, and do
not charge
  additional fees, other than to cover costs of physical distribution.
You may
  use parts of the source code free of charge in the other open source
or
  non-commercial project, with the condition that you clearly indicate
from
  where it was taken. If you want to use whole program or its parts in
the
  commercial product you must get my permission for that.

    REGISTRATION: Ranish Partition Manager version 2.38 is distributed
as the
  shareware. You may evaluate the program for the period of time and
then you
  pay for it if you like it.

    Private users, educational and non-profit organizations may
evaluate the
  program for the period of 10 years, then they must pay registration
fee of
  $10 per household/classroom/department or stop using the program. If
you
  cannot afford $10, you may send me a postcard with a nice view of
your city,
  and I will count you as a registered user. If you are a poor student,
  than the postcard with a view of your university is definetely the
best way
  to register the program.

    Commercial organizations, governments, and military units may
evaluate
  the program for 30 days. Then they must pay registration fee of $20
per
  each department or technical unit, that uses it, or stop using the
program.
    If Boot Manager, that comes with this program, is installed on
more than
  three workstations then $3 must be added for the workstations 1-20,
$2 - for
  workstations 31-60, $1 - for 61-90, and 10 cents for each one over
90.

    Once the program is registerd the registation is valid for all
subsequent
  versions of the program.

    If, for some reason, you cannot use version 2.38 - the last
freeware
  version 2.37 will remain available for download at my home page,
with the
  source code in the Public Domain.

  To register Partition Manager send US checks, money orders, or
postcards to

  Mikhail Ranish                Include your name and e-mail address
so I can
  P.O.Box 140404                send you confirmation of your
registration.
  Brooklyn, NY 11214  USA       ranish@...

  http://come.to/ranish  ->  http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part

  PM Announcements:          http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/partman-
announcements
  PM Discussion & Questions: http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/partman-
discussion
  <===END
--

> It appears that only the version number has changed from 2.38 beta to
> 2.40 released:
>
> http://www.ranish.com/
> http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part/
>
> "Version 2.40 is the same as 2.38 Beta, which has proven to be very
> stable by having no bug reports nor any other problems for almost a
> year."
>
> "Download Version 2.40.00 (96k) dated February 8, 2001."
>
> Also, the mailing list link now points
> to "http://groups.yahoo.com/group/partman-discussion".
>
> I haven't downloaded 2.40 yet.
>

Well .. I'm going to check it out but found the beta buggy and
didn't bother to report it because I understood the author
was busy with military duty and folks were working on fixes.

I'm not sure but I feel that there may be one small bug with various
machines. I recall seeing this on the message board before....but on my
ex-friend's comp. and my old motherboard, whenever I use the text boot
loader or go into partman from the boot loader, we get a red dialogue with a
General Protection Fault and the machine locks.

Actually, I remember posting this in the past too.
Sorry for the repeat...

--Jibben


_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

I'm just curious as to what has been done by others with the source code.
Haven't seen any variations of partman.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jibben Nee" <ziddey@...>
To: <partman-discussion@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 9:49 PM
Subject: Re: [partman-discussion] 2.40


> I'm not sure but I feel that there may be one small bug with various
> machines. I recall seeing this on the message board before....but on my
> ex-friend's comp. and my old motherboard, whenever I use the text boot
> loader or go into partman from the boot loader, we get a red dialogue with
a
> General Protection Fault and the machine locks.
>
> Actually, I remember posting this in the past too.
> Sorry for the repeat...
>
> --Jibben
>
>
> _________________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
>
>
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> partman-discussion-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/partman-discussion/
>
>


_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

Hello,

Sorry, if you get this message twice, there is some overlapping
in the newsgroup subscription.

1. There is a "new" version of Partition Manager 2.40 available at
    my site: http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part -> part.zip
    It is identical to the version 2.38 latest beta, which has proven
    to be very stable by having no bug reports nor any other problems
    for almost a year (since nobody has reported ANY bugs concerning
    part.exe functionality other than missing features, I assume that
    there aren't any bugs nor problems).

    Version 2.40 is not even a recompile, I just went into the binary
    and edited version string.

2. There is a new beta version called 2.41. It has same functionality
    for the GUI part as 2.40, but I have included the command line
    interface similar to the gdisk from Symantec, so you might want to
    check that one out:

    http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part -> partbeta.zip  (2.41)

    Version 2.41 includes version of executable which simulate
    partitioning process on files rather than actual disks.

3. Regarding the mailing lists: as you know eGroups have been changed
    to Yahoo Groups. The new mailing list addresses are:

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/partman-announcements

      Post message: partman-announcements@yahoogroups.com
      Subscribe:    partman-announcements-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
      Unsubscribe:  partman-announcements-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/partman-discussion

      Post message: partman-discussion@yahoogroups.com
      Subscribe:    partman-discussion-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
      Unsubscribe:  partman-discussion-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

    Please, subscribe to [partman-announcements] to recieve once a year
    messages like this one, and to [partman-discussion] for every day
    e-mail traffic.

    Once this message is posted I will delete old partman@...
    list.

Also, about bugs:

Jibben Nee wrote:
> I'm not sure but I feel that there may be one small bug with
> various machines. I recall seeing this on the message board
> before....but on my ex-friend's comp. and my old motherboard,
> whenever I use the text boot loader or go into partman from
> the boot loader, we get a red dialogue with a General Protection
> Fault and the machine locks.

If you have seen this before March, 2000 version then it could be
A20 memory line proble, which I have fixed back in March. If there
were any other issues after that, I must have missed the posting.
Then, please, let me know and I will remove word "stable" from the
partman home page and will try to fix it.

> I'm just curious as to what has been done by others with the source
> code. Haven't seen any variations of partman.

To answer your question, about the code. I am trying to get back
to the Partition Manager code after almost six month and it looks
scarry to me. However, if anyone would like to get a copy e-mail
me and I will send itto you, but I must warn you it is a complete
mess.

Thank you for the patience,
Mikhail Ranish