China DOS Union

Today I wanted to add a DOS menu to my 2000 system! A friend recommended it,
so I downloaded "MS-DOS 7.10 full installation edition" from Newhua. I finished installing it under DOS (it was all in English, basically I just kept pressing Enter all the way through! Don't laugh!) After entering the system, it said new hardware was found (I guess it was the hard disk, because it modified the MBR or added some LOGO or something). I didn't pay much attention! Later, because I needed to use BT, I used GHOST to restore an earlier ghost backup! But even after restoring the earlier XP ghost, the first time entering the system it still reported new hardware found, and it had to restart before it could run normally!!! I'm dizzy! I guess this "MS-DOS 7.10 full installation edition" changed something in the hard disk boot area and left it in the hard disk partition table! It didn't get restored, right! I restored several earlier ghost backups in a row, all of them were ones that had been working normally before, and now they all say new hardware found. Also, SkyNet firewall reports: unable to open driver, restart required for normal operation. Although after restarting I haven't noticed anything unusual, the hardware got changed for no reason. If anyone has a way to restore it I'd be very grateful!!!
Oh right, I also used FIXMBR in the Win2000 Recovery Console. At that time it reported: illegal MBR information. I ran FIXMBR, but after restoring the earlier GHOST it still reported: new hardware found. This is killing me!!!

When DOS was installing and asked whether to rewrite the MBR, you chose "Yes," right? But usually it still shouldn't end up like this.

Ah yes, that's right, you've finally come. I've been waiting here for you all this time! It's almost dawn! Is there any way to restore it? Thanks.

Do I have to use fdisk to restore it? My hard disk is 160GB! There's more than 100GB of data in it!!

I just tried FDISK /MBR, still no good. What exactly do I have to do to restore the old MBR?!

A net friend on QQ just said: delete the C drive partition, then recreate the C drive partition.
That way the mbr will be gone, reinstall windows, done.

But would that make the data in the other logical partitions get lost?

Could it be that the source code for rewriting the MBR in MSDOS71 causes incompatibility with hard disks over 160GB?
My 20 and 80GB drives both have no problem...

Wengier
Administrator:
I've seen you online all day, are you really too lazy to answer my question at all? Nobody is perfect! Even if you really don't know the solution, we wouldn't say anything! Or do you know and simply can't be bothered with people like us!
The forum slogan says it well: .........let us create and develop together a beautiful world of freedom and GNU GPL!
Do you know how much fear and panic I went through during this whole day? Because I had no experience! And without your hints, I could only restore the MBR on my own based on some net friends' suggestions! The worst time was when I used SuperFdisk and erased the entire MBR! This software didn't give an obvious enough warning or backup before erasing! As a result the entire hard disk was paralyzed!
In the end, a kind nearby net friend took a taxi over and brought Jiangmin, and only after more than 2 hours was it finally restored!
And I listened to a friend's recommendation! Downloaded software from your place! Ran into a little doubt! To you it may be nothing at all! And you just brush past it! Tell me! Are you some great expert so you're amazing? Were you born an expert? Weren't you ever as clueless as me??????????????????????????????

Don't get excited, it's not that nobody wanted to answer, it's that your problem is a bit strange.
Reasonably speaking, ghost is very overbearing: once restored, there shouldn't be anything that won't boot. Later you also used fdisk/mbr repairs and so on... maybe reply #7 was right, since it's 160G, the hard disk parameters can't be modified with fdisk. Because even windowxp didn't support 160G, only later with sp2, so maybe fdisk won't work.
A suggestion was made; actually your problem didn't need to be such a hassle (I didn't see it earlier, maybe I'm a bit late). If you run into this again in the future, since you have ghost anyway, you can simply reinstall winXP and restore the partitions. Then ghost it again, maybe that will work.

I wonder if MSDOS created one extra partition during installation?

Or adjusted the partition table?

Hehe, experts above (posts #9-#12), I guess you may have misunderstood the OP's description a bit, and what you're guessing all sounds too serious.
I'm going to eat now, I'll continue explaining this afternoon.

First of all, my sympathies to the OP for what happened.
On the other hand, think of it as a lesson. For people not familiar with the DOS system, entering the DOS system always carries a certain risk. I don't know about others, but I myself gradually became a DOS newbie bug through taking risks.

Actually you can use Diskgen (Diskman) to restore the MBR or the partition table.

Indeed. To be honest, after all it's not some malicious software, so the consequences really aren't anything serious. In any case it has no effect on the machine or system! Basically you can say there's no hindrance at all! There are still many programs now that write the MBR, for example some newer operating systems or even certain versions of the early One-Key Restore Wizard, and so on are all like this! In fact, installing MSdos7.10 did no damage to your machine either, it only changed the MBR a bit. I'm just unusually fussy about this issue, I care about boot speed and can't stand that restoring an old GHOST always reports new hardware, that's all! I have to make that clear!
The symptom is very simple: I mentioned it at the beginning! It's just that the first time entering the system it reports new hardware found and forces a restart. It's not like when you plug in a new hard disk, where it also reports new hardware found but doesn't require a restart! Secondly there's the boot speed issue, but only people like me who are obsessed with speed can clearly feel it. For ordinary people whose progress bar only scrolls 1-2 times, they won't notice at all!
After experimenting these past few days, I got 6 hard disks to play with, and treated it as learning some new things too. In the end I found a way to restore it. DOS old hands needn't read this; actually it's just a simple restoration of boot information:
First back up the hard disk data, then use diskgen to delete all partitions. Before exiting remember to press F8; it will prompt that it found a previous boot record. Delete it, then repartition. Now with the CD-ROM connected, my hard disk enters XP when the scrolling bar has only just appeared!

Summary:
Through this incident, my friends around me and I got the biggest benefit of all: be sure to make a backup of your hard disk boot sector and partition table. It only takes a few seconds, but at a critical moment it can save your hard disk! Save your data! Remember this!! Remember this!!!

[ Last edited by dsjnc on 2006-5-24 at 13:23 ]

Generally speaking, after the partitions on a hard disk have changed, WINDOWS will detect new hardware when it starts up. But if only the MBR was changed, it should not detect new hardware!