[RESOLVED] Win95 and large HD's

[java123]

Hey folks,
When i try to put a new maxtor 8.4 gig HD in my system everything goes fine until I am prompted to put in my startup disk to load window95, (I have AST so I put in the floppy for it). this floppy enables the cd and gets up to the point of copying the restore disk, then I get a message like, No Hard Drive found, use the appropriate utility to format disk. Thing is I used the Maxtor utility to format and partition with no problem. I have looked at my documentation for the disk and see there is alot to consider when putting a large HD on Windows 95, (I have osr1 with the service pack 1 so I currently have 4.00.95a)I went ahead and did the jumpers as Maxtor said if there is a capacity issue (J50 and J46). I also tried to do a user defined on the bios to do 16 heads 63 cylinders and 1023 in other categories. Maxtor says I should also disable LBA. Well nothing says anything about LBA in my AST Bios Rel. 1.02. What do you think? Is LBA the problem? Should I try to update the bios? Should I try to put 95 on the system without using the AST restore disk? I have a Win95 companion disk. If anyone can clarify this it would be great, I'm calling Maxtor tomorrow so eventually I will lick this, but I've always found, more info, better than less. thanx

[TechieChick]

Win95a is only capable of "seeing" 2 GB. Win95 didn't give full large disk support until Win95b. You need to partition your drive into 4 approx. 2 GB partitions, then format the first partition (under Win95 - not a hd utility disk) to take the install. Another hint - after you fdisk & format, copy the entire Win95 directory off the cdrom to your c: drive, then run setup.exe from c:\win95. The installation will go faster and smoother and later on when you install your hardware, you won't be prompted for the Win95 cdrom all the time. The registry files already know where to look for all the .cab files.

Good Luck!

[java123]

hey techie,
thanx, haven't tried yet because I'm at work.
your suggestion sounds great. i'm gonna try it. Especially copying from cd rom. Perhaps you can answer this. If I don't use the restore disk from AST, but simply boot to my windows startup disc, How do I make sure I can get the cdrom player to work? I've got the drivers for the cd player do I just put them on the boot disk? Also someone told me to not even do it this way because i have the Win 95 companion disk. What do you think
thanx

[TechieChick]

To enable your cdrom drive in DOS, copy MSCDEX.EXE and your cdrom driver (???.sys) to the Win95 boot disk and place the appropriate entries in your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS on your floppy.
Example:
Autoexec.bat: a:\mscdex /d:mtmide01 /l:d
Config.sys: device=a:\mtmcdai.sys /d:mtmide01

Someone told you not to do this because of you have the Win95 companion disk? What do you (they) mean?