On Sunday, December 13, 1998 James McGuire <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I am trying to use EZ-BIOS (that comes with a Western Digital hard drive
>via EZ-Drive) to overcome BIOS limitations on a larger than 520 Mb hard
>drive.  Everytime I install EZ-BIOS, and then install either NT
>Workstation or Server, the installation goes well until it asks you to
>remove all disks and press enter to reboot.  When this happens, as soon
>as the system recognizes the hard drive on bootup, it stops.  No matter
>how many times I reboot, the same thing happens.  Does anyone know of
>any conflict between EZ-BIOS and Windows NT's?

It sounds as though the process is failing as soon as NTLDR switches
into 32 bit flat model mode and loads the "mini file system" which
is the set of drivers to give access to your boot device in FAT, HPFS
or NTFS. Only it couldn't recognize your disk...  :-(
The next thing that should have happened is the Boot Menu, but you don't
normally notice that because the setup program sets the menu delay to zero.

This Microsoft Knowledge Base article refers to Windows NT 3.5 and 3.51:

Q136039 Installing Windows NT on a Hard Disk Configured with EZ-Drive

Here is the gist of it:-
----
SYMPTOMS: If you install Windows NT on a Conner hard drive configured with
the EZ-Drive utility, one of the following error messages appear:

   Hard drives are not usable by NT
   -or-
   NT cannot access the partitions prepared by DOS

CAUSE: This problem occurs if the Windows NT Compatibility Mode (also
called Floppy Boot Protection in later versions of EZ-Drive) is not enabled
for a computer using a hard drive that does not have logical block addressing
(LBA) capability. If the system has LBA capability, then the EZ-Drive
Overlay Manager does not need to be used.

RESOLUTION: To correct this problem, enable the Windows NT Compatibility Mode.
<snip - step-by-step instructions in the article>
----
You may also be interested in the notes in:
Q103284 Contents of Windows NT SETUP.TXT, Part 1
     1.0 Removing Previous Versions
     2.0 General Hardware Notes
     3.0 Specific Computer Systems
     4.0 General Disk Drive Information
     5.0 SCSI Devices
Q103285 Contents of Windows NT SETUP.TXT, Part 2
     6.0 Error Messages
     7.0 Video Display Drivers and Adapters (x86 Computers)
     8.0 Removable Media
     9.0 Supported Keyboard Layouts
     10.0 Installing Windows NT over NextStep
     11.0 Converting File Systems During Installation
(These are for NT 3.1 - perhaps there is something
more recent on the Win NT installation CD-ROM?)

You can get your own copy of an article by sending a blank email
to [log in to unmask] with the article-id as the subject, e.g.
   TO: [log in to unmask]
   SUBJECT: Q136039
   MESSAGE: <leave this part blank>

If you have access to the Microsoft Technet CD-ROMs, there is
a long (40 pages), detailed and interesting article entitled
'Setup and Configuration Issues' describing the Setup and Boot
processes, but this says nothing about large drive problems.


Len Warner <[log in to unmask]> http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~len/ ICQ:10120933

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