FreeDOS boot problem

[David Brown]

Hello:

I'm trying to boot FreeDOS beta 7. I've fdisked to make the C:
(primary) partition active, formatted C:, SYS C:'ed, and INSTALLed
from the full disk set via floppies. When I CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot,
the system gets to:

Loading FreeDOS...
ROOT FAT KERNEL

I never get to GO! (I do if I boot from the installation floppy), and
my floppy drive activity light stays on constantly until I reboot.

If there is some file I need to edit (I can access the DOS partition
from my Win2K partition) please let me know how to get the the C:\
prompt.

Thanks for any help.

[Albert .W]

How are your partitions? (size, format, letter)
Which partition holds FreeDOS?

/ Abbe

djbr...@worldnet.att.net (David Brown) wrote in message news:<845e3317.01103...@posting.google.com>...

[David Brown]

I have a Win2K 3GB primary partition first on disk, followed by a
FreeDOS 600MB primary partition. Then I have the rest of Win2K. This
is on a 40GB IDE Maxtor drive as primary master.

Windows is formatted NTFS which it sees as drive letters C: and E:.
FreeDOS is formatted FAT16 and is seen as D: under Windows, and C:
under FreeDOS. I figure this isn't a problem since FreeDOS can't read
NTFS.

In case it's relevant, I'm making Windows the active partition and
booting from it when I need to using OpenBSD's fdisk on CD. I need
Unix, but I'd like to get FreeDOS working first.

Thanks for any help.

David Brown

ar...@sverige.nu (Albert .W) wrote in message news:<b5f99eac.01103...@posting.google.com>...

[Bart Oldeman]

djbr...@worldnet.att.net (David Brown) wrote in message
news:<845e3317.01103...@posting.google.com>...

> I'm trying to boot FreeDOS beta 7. I've fdisked to make the C:
> (primary) partition active, formatted C:, SYS C:'ed, and INSTALLed
> from the full disk set via floppies. When I CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot,
> the system gets to:
>
> Loading FreeDOS...
> ROOT FAT KERNEL
>
> I never get to GO! (I do if I boot from the installation floppy), and
> my floppy drive activity light stays on constantly until I reboot.
>
> If there is some file I need to edit (I can access the DOS partition
> from my Win2K partition) please let me know how to get the the C:\
> prompt.
>

This is a problem with FreeDOS format forgetting about the high word
of the "hidden sectors" number in the boot sector.

Try reformat-ing the FAT16 partition using Windows, then use SYS
and install again.

I have the fix for FreeDOS format and it will be fixed in the next
version (check the fd-dev mailing list archive from "join" at
www.freedos.org)

Bart

[David Brown]

bart.o...@bristol.ac.uk (Bart Oldeman) wrote in message news:<2e921d9a.01110...@posting.google.com>...

I've tried this with both the beta 7 release and the ripcord beta 7 H1
release. Formatting under Win2K halts the system at ROOT. I'm
guessing there is some quirk with the Win2K FAT16 FreeDOS doesn't like
(albeit it can access these partitions).

I'm admittedly a newbie with FreeDOS, but just thinking out load, if
the boot process gets past FAT and KERNEL, doesn't this imply FreeDOS
has read the boot sector and filesystem and loaded the kernel? What
steps are taken between KERNEL and GO! (and afterwards until the C:\
prompt)? Is this a command.com, config.sys or autoexec.bat problem?

Thanks, and sorry to keep repeatedly posting to my post.
David Brown

[Bart Oldeman]

djbr...@worldnet.att.net (David Brown) wrote in message

news:<845e3317.01110...@posting.google.com>... > I've tried this

with both the beta 7 release and the ripcord beta 7 H1 > release. Formatting
under Win2K halts the system at ROOT. I'm > guessing there is some quirk with
the Win2K FAT16 FreeDOS doesn't like > (albeit it can access these partitions).

Hmm. This was after re SYS-ing it from FreeDOS?

Well, I applied the one-line fix to FORMAT and recompiled, you may wish to
download it:
http://www.dosemu.org/~bart/xmat08_fixhiddenhigh.zip
and maybe that solves it (until Brian Reifsnyder releases ver 0.9).

> I'm admittedly a newbie with FreeDOS, but just thinking out load, if
> the boot process gets past FAT and KERNEL, doesn't this imply FreeDOS
> has read the boot sector and filesystem and loaded the kernel? What
> steps are taken between KERNEL and GO! (and afterwards until the C:\
> prompt)? Is this a command.com, config.sys or autoexec.bat problem?

It's neither, it's the boot sector trying to load kernel.sys: it
a) prints ROOT
b) tries to locate kernel.sys in the root directory, if found then
prints FAT
c) loads the FAT into memory then prints KERNEL
d) loads kernel.sys from the disk then prints GO!
e) jumps to kernel code

so if the kernel hangs at ROOT, it reads something, what it thinks is
a boot directory, but gets confused and hangs.

Bart