Hi all.

I have a recurrent problem which is driving me nuts - partitions on my own
system that have been set up as Primary Dos frequently change themselves to
Non-Dos.

I previously posted about this some months back, but I'll try again, just in
case anyone has fresh thoughts on the matter.

My system is W98SE.  My hardware is irrelevant, I think, as this problem has
persisted throughout hardware changes, but the mobo is a recent model
Gigabyte, with 512Mb DDR ram.  The drives are all UltraDMA 133, 7200 rpm.
All were originally set up as Fat32.

The 20 Gb single-partition system drive, C, is labelled Max20.
Another single-partition drive, D, is used for storage, and is labelled
Max40.

These two are master and slave on IDE0.

Max20's single partition was set up as a Primary Dos partition about 6
months ago, but has since reverted to a Non-Dos partition.  I didn't notice
it at the time, but it probably occurred about 6-8 weeks back.

Max40's single partition is Primary Dos.

Yesterday I launched an attempt to restore Max20 to Pri-Dos status. This is
important to me because I make frequent excursions into DOS, and things are
a little awkward when the OS drive can't be seen in DOS.

To help with the restoration, I employed another drive, Sam40, on IDE1, to
be used as a temporary staging post.

Here's the sequence of events:

Using the NoSpin boot disk, I booted to DOS.
I used FDisk and on Sam40 I deleted the existing single partition.  Next I
created a single Primary Dos partition, then rebooted and formatted the disk
with the /s switch.

I rebooted to Windows and copied the whole of Max20 to Sam40 using
Drive2Drive. Then I shut down and reset the jumpers on all three drives to
suit, changed the BIOS boot sequence and rebooted to Windows.  Sam40 had
become the OS drive and Windows worked OK.

Rebooted to DOS, checked status with FDisk.  Max40 was now reported as
Non-Dos, it had somehow changed from Primary Dos!  Sam40 was still Primary
Dos, Max20 was still Non-Dos, no change in the status of these two.

Ran FDisk, reconfigured Max20 to Primary Dos and formatted it with /s.

Rebooted to DOS and checked status.  Max20 is now Primary Dos.  But what
the.....!  Max40 has gone back to Primary Dos, while Sam40 is now showing up
as Non-Dos.

Here I paused to tear out my remaining hair, then went to bed.

This morning I disconnected Max20 and Max40 completely, and rebooted into
DOS with Sam40.  Again, I FDisked the drive, reconfiguring it to a single
Primary Dos partition, then formatted it with the /s switch.

Then I disconnected Sam40, reconnected Max20 and Max40 and rebooted to DOS.
Both have retained their single-partition status as Primary Dos.  Whew! So
far so good.

But the exercise created more questions than answers.  And I don't feel at
all confident that any of these settings will endure.

I know that the Pri-Dos\Non-Dos status configuration is locked into the
setting of a just a few bytes on the hard drive, I presume somewhere in the
FAT.

But because of the way that Max40 fluctuated un-assisted from Pri-Dos to
Non-Dos then back to Pri-Dos, perhaps it's something that I can manipulate?

I've combed the net for information on the subject, but what little is there
refers only W95, and doesn't help.

Constructive suggestions will be welcomed with glad cries.

TIA

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
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