1st boot command.com problem - new A7V133?

dbota

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On a system that I just built with a new A7V133, I have the boot 15.3 Gig WD IDE HD (a fully loaded drive from a previous system) cabled to the primary ATA100 controller. The first time I started to boot, a dos screen asked for the path to command.com. I didn't reply or continue the boot process at that time ... I shut the computer off instead. Now I am trying to boot for the second time and I just get left at an A:\ prompt without receiving the previous prompt for the command.com location.

What do I do to get booted into Windows 98 SE that is on my WD hard drive? Can I somehow get the original screen and supply the location of command.com?
 

dhlucke

Polypheme
First off, get it off the 100 controller and back on the 33/66. Then see if you can get in. You'll have to redo all your drivers for windows. I did it from scratch so I can't be of too much help,but the only way I could get going was to start with the 66 IDE and then switch to the 100 once I was up and running.

"I think I brained my damage"
 

ejsmith2

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That's the only bad thing about the promise chip on-board. I leave my hard disk on the ata-66, and run my cdwriter off the ata-100. I hate having to move the ide cable everytime I crash the computer, which has been happening a lot lately. Having four channels to play with is nice though; I won't ever go back to just 2......
 

dbota

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Ok, thanks ... got it off the ATA100 controller and Windows starts booting and finding devices and looking for drivers but then it finds some that require me to insert Win98 SE and I cannot access any drive letter except A: and C:. If I shut down and boot to my emergency win98 SE boot floppy, which loads a generic CD driver, I can access the CDrom drive ... so my D:\ access problem seems to be driver related and not cabling or hardware.

How do I fix the CDrom access problem so that Windows can boot fully and find the various drivers it is looking for on CDs?
 
G

Guest

Guest
Use the Boot disk again and go to gain access to the cdrom drive. Then copy all the .cab files from the d:\win98 directory to a directory on your c drive. Then boot normal and when it prompts you for the Windows 98 CD - point to the directory where the cab files are.
 

ejsmith2

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Almost sounds like your cdrom is still hooked up to the ata-100.
Other than that, I have problems getting it to recognize a 'boot' cdrom. I turn off all boot devices except the cdrom, and go from there. It seems like the bios won't recognize the cdrom sometimes unless you hit 'delete' at the last possible second, allowing it to search the primary and secondary channels for devices.
It doesn't work quite like my 440FX used to, but it's faster ;)
 

dbota

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Called Western Digital: They showed me that the ATA100 controller can be set in the BIOS as a boot drive but it is under a submenu of the last choice ... which I forget the name of ... not where you would expect it as its own listing near the top of the list. It puts it in the boot search order behind the floppy and CDrom drives but it is included.

Also, I solved my CDrom problem. Just needed to let Windows go thru several interations of finding new hardware and drivers and rebooting until it finally got around to finding the CDrom and DVDrom drivers.
 

ejsmith2

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If you look down the side of the screen, on the boot area under bios, you'll see a few options.
You can hit the '+' or '-' key to move the boot order, making your cdrom-ata66-ata100-floppy the boot order, or any combination.
I leave it at that, and disable all the ones I'm not using. My kenwood doesn't like to boot from a cdrom. I have to hit the enter key 3 times just to get it to recognize the cdrom is bootable. Doesn't work like the old 440BX I used to have, but it does the job.