invalid partition table

B

bethwayne1

New Member
hi guys, keep up the good thing you've got going here.

i'm having problem setting up an old pc for a specific purpose. i had assembled

1. a SIS 305 motherboard,
2. with pentium mmx 233mhz cpu
3. 16,384k memory
4. a maxtor 10 gig hard drive which i had pre-loaded with win98 se from another computer.

the problem is PC boot up but fails to enter windows.
giving a the following message "invalid partition table", thinking it might be an hard drive issue,

i then used another 10 gig hard drive pre loaded with windows98 se and the same result.

any idea for a solution will be highly appreciated.
 
You will first need to create a boot floppy in order to see the drive reformatted since the current installations are useless on the reasssembled system. You will also need at least a 98 upgrade if not full install disk to see Windows installed fresh all over again on either the current primary after reformatting that or seeing a totally new one created on the drive.

If you don't have a 98 startup floppy don't panic as long as you have an original installation and not simply a recovery disk to see Windows installed. You can download the files needed to see a boot disk created from http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
 
Try this:

Boot up the computer with a Windows 98 boot disk.

At the DOS prompt type in fdisk. It will ask you if you want large disk support, say yes. In fdisk, press 2 to check for active partitions.

Look under the Status column. The active partition is usually assigned to the drive which contains your operating system.

If there's no active partition set, enter the number of the partition to make active then reboot and see if it's fixed.
 
You may have to go into the bios setup first in order to set floppy as the first in the order if you have a floppy drive installed for that attempt. If Windows stalls after the repair attempt you will still likely end up reformatting if not repartitioning the drive to see a fresh copy of 98SE go on there.
 
sorry guy but i've done it all, dive was formatted after partition was created an made active,

could it be possible that my HD's too large for this setup.

i've noticed that most 233mhz computer setup has hard drives ranging in sizes from 1gig - 4.3 gigs.
 
LBA mode(Logical Block Addressing) is probably lacking there for supporting the larger capacity drives on the old system. Often this was the case with the old boards where you had to see if that was available in the bios to be enabled.

I ran into that on an old I486 system when trying to replace a 1.4gb drive with a larger 13gb model. :P

There I ended up using a bios overlay utility available at the time by the name of EZ-Bios until getting into a newer custom build. If you can find a manual online or otherwise for the board or the system there if prebuilt look through that for info on enabling it.

A detailed description on LBA can reviewed at http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/lba.htm
 
PC eye,
been looking around but can't seem to find manual for my sis 305 motherboard.

the next thing is the reason why i had to pre-load win98 on the HD using another PC is because both CD-Rom and floppy drive appears to be non functional although i've set each at times as priorty boot.

both cd-rom and floppy had been detected at startup.

any ideas.
 
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The floppy should boot automatically if it's in the boot priority before anything else and theres a disk in. For the CDrom it usually asks you to press anykey to boot from CD. I don't think it's an LBA problem, if the system supports at least ATA-2 then it's good for up to 127GB drives. If it's using cylinder/head/sector mapping, which is entirely possible (I haven't used hardware this oldfor a long time) then the max drive size is about 8GB.

Are you sure the CD and floppy don't work? Try disconnecting the hard drive and using a DOS boot disk.
 
thanks bro but both drive does work, tried in another PC.

when either is set as boot priority, during bootup both cd-rom and floppy drive are lighted up with win98 cd and boot disc respectively.

.....both drives make that sound indicating that indicating floppy disc and win98 are being read but never boot into setup.

where do i get a DOS boot disc
 
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The first link above is for bootdisk.com where you can find disk images for boot floppies even for XP as well as 98. Your problem being an old system could simply be the need to swap out drive cables since those get dried up and useless if they are the typical flat ribbon type. That would explain why the drives work on one system but not the other.
 
That brings you back to the bios then. On the old boards you had to look for the setting to enable large drive capacity. It won't always list that as LBA. Often you had to manually configure the cylinder and head count in order to use larger drives.
 
you don't just play with it. It must have the exact same layout as the other machine. Otherwise the sector numbering will not be the same
 
Finding one is what you need to do there since the manual will have the information needed for manually setting the number of cylinders, heads, sectors per track, along with any defects found. You first read the label on the drive itself to see what that shows for amounts.

Some old boards lacked the user defined option where the amount is not manually entered by the closest amount seen in a list is used while in the bios. For me that would going back 10yrs. not wanting to try and coach you on this.

"If your computer does not offer an exact match for the drive type number, and doesn't have a User Defined setting for you to enter parameters, you can improvise by choosing the correct number of heads but selecting a smaller number of cylinders than the drive actually has. Choose the number of cylinders closest to the number that your drive has, but do not go over. Using fewer cylinders will result in reduced disk capacity though, as the rest will be unused." http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/idedrv3.html?

You still need to know the make and model board or model of what brand of prebuilt system in order to locate an online maunal for the older system there. You might even end up having to contact the manufacturer directly for them to send you a link from their own archoves.
 
if he wants to use an installation he made on another computer he cannot just improvise something
 
nyhk said:
if he wants to use an installation he made on another computer he cannot just improvise something
Click to expand...

Apparently you have never worked with any old systems where the board didn't recognise over a certain amount of drive size. Before you can even partition and format any larger drive the number of cylinders had to be manually set or the closest number selected from a list while in the bios in order to have the board recognise the full capacity of the drive.

Try installing a 13gb drive on an old I486 system. I've been there done that before. That was without having a manual available for the old case then. A trip to the support site was little help as well for the old cheapo AST brand at the time.
 
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