Do you enjoy a *tremendous* challenge?  Then read on,
dear Listonians.

The System:

P5-120 (Gateway) 48 megs EDO
Aladdin OEM motherboard
Mr. BIOS Aladdin BIOS (July '96)
EIDE & SCSI (Buslogic BT-958)
WD 4.3 gig EIDE & Seagate Barracuda 4.3 gig SCSI
Sanyo 3-cdrom jukebox  (4X)

Quad Boot:
Windows95 English (on the EIDE primary) [FAT 16]
Windows95 Japanese (a second EIDE primary) [FAT 16]
NT4.0 Workstation (on an EIDE extended logical) [FAT 16]
Red Hat Linux 5.0 (on the SCSI extended logical) [EXT2]

Using both System Commander & Partition Magic
to manage things.

The Layout & The Problem:
(Read carefully, as this is rather complex.)  :))

Windows95 English is spread over logicals out to
drive L -- on the SCSI drive.

Win95-J has only one drive, which is lettered correctly as
drive M from within Win95-E.  It also shows correctly
as drive C when booting into W95-J. (Remember, it's a
primary partition.)

The problem is that when *any* additional primary is created,
Win95-E correctly assigns it drive letter M, but immediately
puts that drive into DOS compatibility mode, so that the drive
cannot be accessed from drive M on explorer, but only from
phantom drive N, which is established at the same time.

It doesn't matter what type of primary I create.  An empty
FAT 16 primary causes the same result.  It doesn't matter if
NT is the second system installed.  Same result.

Now, strangely, ADDITIONAL primary creations do NOT cause
additional problems.  If NT is put on a primary, as the third
primary, it is assigned (correctly) drive N.  In that case,
Win95-J still holds the drive M position, but it's still in
DCM, and is available from Win95-E only as phantom drive O.
Drive M is the only drive that runs in DCM.  Drive N is
fine.  (In my case, however, NT is on a logical, and it
correctly identifies itself as drive N from within its
own file system.  But I have tried it the other way, and
the problem doesn't change.)  I should add there that it
doesn't matter in which order the second or third systems
are installed.  IOW, if you install NT as the second system,
on a primary, it then is the system that ends up on a DOS
compatibility mode drive from within Win95-E.

All drives display correctly and are accessible under the
correct letter from within both Win95-J and NT.  The only
problem is from within Win95-E.

This is a small performance hit, which I don't like, and
some programs (Norton 3.0 Speed Disk and Disk Doctor)
freeze up in Win95-E because of it.  (Oddly, Norton 2.0 is
just fine in the same situation.) And no, I do not try
to use these utilities on drives they are not meant to
be used on.  I limit their access very carefully to
the English Windows drives.

My cdrom drives are permanently X, Y, and Z, so they're
out of the way.

My config.sys is empty, so I can't imagine what possible
driver that I might be loading that might be causing
the problem.

I have wads of hair all over the floor from trying to
resolve this.  I have come to the conclusion that there is
no resolution possible.

I would be *deeply* grateful to anyone who could show
me a work around.

As a final note, I create new primaries by the book according
to System Commander.  That is, the first primary is temporarily
hidden while a second or third is created.  I don't think the
problem is there.

I sure hope someone is challenged by this.  I will personally
trumpet the technical savvy and troubleshooting superiority
of anyone who has a solution for this from one end of cyberspace
to the other.  :))

Tia,

Lance