Starting Win XP in MSDOS 2

[IDIDIT]

I have a maxtor 60gb drive that has failed. It was part of a RAID 1 array and to get an RMA from MAXTOR I need to run their diagnostic program on the disc from a MSDOS.

I created a floppy disc from format selecting the create MSDOS start up disc.

When I reboot I get "DISC I/O error - replace disk then press any key.

Am I missing something ??

 

[jrbarnett]

You need to get hold of a disk formatted with the MS-DOS system files in order for a system to start up from it. Try

http://www.Bootdisk.com

if you don't have one to hand.

 

[bcastner]

jbarnett,

The utility creates a bootable DOS image.

IDIDIT,

You need for first go into BIOS and set the floppy disk as the first boot device.

 

[IDIDIT]

Let me explain a bit more about the Maxtor diagnostic program they want run. It produces a fault code and therefore establishes the drive is really faulty. They say that running the test will remove all data (not a problem because it is a mirror) and to ensure no other drive is affected, remove them all before running the test.
Therefore no operating system will exist in my case, hence the need for a boot disk. |

I checked out the Bootdisk site and downloaded the appropriate utility. It would have taken 7 floppies to complete the process, but seemed to me to be more for a full setup procedure, so I am not sure this is right, unless this is the only way of getting XP to drop to DOS.

What I really need is the Win 98 options to drop to DOS, but thinking about it, it seems irrelevant what OS I am since the drive I am testing will be overwritten by the test, so I maybe I could just use a Win 98 DOS start up disk.

 

[Dreamland]

IDIDIT - The short answer is that you can floppy boot your computer with any recent version of DOS (6.22/3.x/95/98/ME) and run the Maxtor diagnostic program. If you have the actual Maxtor disk, it should be bootable. If any (single) boot disk you created in XP as you described boots *directly* to the A prompt (no XP setup-type screens first) then that will work as well.

Don't worry about the fact that the hard drive had XP or used NTFS, or what partitions or RAID volumes ever existed on it - the Maxtor utility ignores all of this and does it's checking at the drive's hardware level writing directly to the disk sectors.

Background:

You're probably getting confused by the term 'startup' disk. An installed XP system does not have the capability to be 'started' from a DOS prompt in the usual sense, i.e., by typing WIN from a prompt. The seven floppies you downloaded were not intended to get you to a DOS A: prompt - they were intended to boot into the XP setup routine or (optionally) it's recovery environment.

Even if you opted for the XP 'repair' and got to what looked like a DOS prompt, you still wouldn't be able to run the Maxtor utility. There's only a limited set of internal commands for the most basic of XP file and system related functions. You could 'see' the utility .exe file (using DIR), move it or delete it, but not run it. It's not a shell for running external programs, and it's not what you want.

The disk you created in XP is a bare-bones MS-DOS boot disk (uses ME's command.com). It should have worked fine to at least get you to an A: prompt. Your BIOS, however, decides which order it's going to search through the bootable devices. It's probably set to look at the A: drive *after* checking for a bootable C: or RAID drive. It's erroring out before it can even look at the A: drive.

If you were successful at changing the boot sequence in your BIOS, you should be able to use it now for running the Maxtor utility. There *is* the possibility that the floppy itself is bad, but I suspect that you could take it to another machine and it would boot fine.

The "MS_DOS" boot disks (Win ME) that XP creates generally cannot be used to see any NTFS-formatted partitions. If you are trying to get at another hard drive on the machine to copy or run the Maxtor utility *and* the drive/partition was formatted as NTFS, the problem is a little more complex. It's much easier just to get the utility on any bootable floppy and run it from there.

Now there is a way to 'start' a working, hard-drive based copy of XP already loaded on your machine by booting from a special floppy, but I'm assuming this isn't your concern at this point.

 

[Dreamland]

Whoops -

In the first paragraph, I said "If you have the actual Maxtor disk, it should be bootable."

I shoud have said, "If you have the actual Maxtor utility floppy diskette, it should be bootable."

I assume your bad Maxtor hard drive itself is, of course, not bootable.

 

[wolluf]

This is all getting SO complicated. As bcastner said near the top, the XP functionality to create MSDOS startup disk when formatting floppy is perfectly good - and likely cause of problem was boot sequence.

 

[bcastner]

It is even easier than that.

The diagnostic routine from Maxtor (I just did this two days ago, so my memory is fresh) is a downloadble .exe file. You execute it and it ask you to insert a formatted floppy disk into the floppy drive. It warns you it will overwrite everything on the floppy. It then does so.

You set the BIOS boot order so that the floppy is the first device.

You reboot your machine.

Caldera DOS (the DOS portion of the Maxtor routine) runs, and the autoexec.bat file runs the Maxblast utility. There are several tests: a connection test, a 90-second test that repeats the connection test and checks S.M.A.R.T entries on the drive, a longer "recertification" test, and the longest by far: a low-level format recertification test.

Any one of the 4 tests will give you an error code you can write down and put on the RMA form. In my case it passed #1, failed a S.M.A.R.T. test in #2, passed #3, would not pass #2 on a second trial, failed #3, and failed #4.

Any error code from tests #2-#4 is good enough for an RMA. The drive in question was a Diamond Max 9 Plus, 80 gig.

 

[IDIDIT]

Thanks for all the responses, I have managed to run the tests now and confirmed the drive is knackered with an error code I need for the RMA.

The way I did it was to create a boot disk from my Win 98 machine and add the powermax.exe to the floppy and then reboot.

I don't know why but the disk would not run on it's own and running XP Pro with the boot device set to Floppy first made no difference.

Thanks again for all your help