gateway 2000 Larger Hardrive that 528 MB

I have a Gatway 2000 P5-60 computer with the 03/31/98 bios update
1.00.10.AF2T . The only hard drive mounted on it is a WD 540MB and has been
initialized with EZ-BIOS in a hidden partition. The drive originally had
Windows 95 installed on it. I booted the computer to a DOS 6.22 system
diskette and FDISk'd the C: drive to remove the only visible partition on
it. Then using FDISK created a new system active partition.
I then used the DOS 6.22 format command to format the C: drive. The drive
formatted to only 528 MB. When I botted the computer up on the C: drive
because EZ-BIOS still appeared in the boot process, everything worked just
fine. But why is Ez_BIOS still on the drive FDISK'd and reformatted ? Also
when I powered down, I attached a 9 GB Maxtor drive to the the slave
connector on the IDE ribbon. It has been FDISK'd and formatted on another
computer with DOS 6.22 on it. It was made into 5 partitions with part1 to 3
formatted to 2GB each and part's 4 and 5 as 1 GB each. Now when I boot the
computer up the BIOS recognizes the the Maxtor 9GB hard drive as hard drive
2, but when DOS boots up it cannot find any of the extended partitons. All
it can find is C: and the CD-ROM as drive D: and nothing more. DOS 6.22
recognizes hard drives up to 9GB's and partitions up to 2 GB. What is going
on ? The BIOS recognizes the drive on boot up but then it disappears when
Dos has booted. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong here ?

The difference between 540MB and 528MB is the math used to compute these
numbers. Micro$oft uses 1024 or 1K to compute size of the drive, multiplying
512 bytes (size of a sector) by the number of heads, tracks, and sectors/track,
then dividing by 1024. In the real world, we use 1000 as a divisor to compute
megabytes.

EZ-BIOS modifies the boot sector of a drive, and neither an FDISK nor a FORMAT
command changes it. If you really and truly want to get rid of EZ-BIOS, use
FDISK /MBR.

Otherwise, I am unsure as to what DOS 6.22 is doing by failing to recognize the
partitions... Ben Myers

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 13:16:41 -0500, "john orwen" <> wrote:

>I have a Gatway 2000 P5-60 computer with the 03/31/98 bios update
>1.00.10.AF2T . The only hard drive mounted on it is a WD 540MB and has been
>initialized with EZ-BIOS in a hidden partition. The drive originally had
>Windows 95 installed on it. I booted the computer to a DOS 6.22 system
>diskette and FDISk'd the C: drive to remove the only visible partition on
>it. Then using FDISK created a new system active partition.
>I then used the DOS 6.22 format command to format the C: drive. The drive
>formatted to only 528 MB. When I botted the computer up on the C: drive
>because EZ-BIOS still appeared in the boot process, everything worked just
>fine. But why is Ez_BIOS still on the drive FDISK'd and reformatted ? Also
>when I powered down, I attached a 9 GB Maxtor drive to the the slave
>connector on the IDE ribbon. It has been FDISK'd and formatted on another
>computer with DOS 6.22 on it. It was made into 5 partitions with part1 to 3
>formatted to 2GB each and part's 4 and 5 as 1 GB each. Now when I boot the
>computer up the BIOS recognizes the the Maxtor 9GB hard drive as hard drive
>2, but when DOS boots up it cannot find any of the extended partitons. All
>it can find is C: and the CD-ROM as drive D: and nothing more. DOS 6.22
>recognizes hard drives up to 9GB's and partitions up to 2 GB. What is going
>on ? The BIOS recognizes the drive on boot up but then it disappears when
>Dos has booted. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong here ?
>

I ran FDISK/MBR and it modified the boot sector of the primary hard drive
and Pctools confirmed this and saved a copy of boot.cps to a floppy
diskette, but it did NOT get rid of EZ-BIOS. The EZ-BIOS still pops up on
boot up of the system.

Is it possible that EZ-BIOS has been flashed into the bios chip on this
computer ?

If that is the case then how do you truly get rid of it ?

Also does the Gateway 03/31/98 bios update of 1.00.10.AF2T still limit the
size of any attached hard drive to 1023 measley cylinders ? It seems like
comprable bioses of that time frame allowed hard drives of up to 30 GB and
however many cylinders that computes to.. It seems like setup had something
like Large Block addressing in it to allow hard drives larger than 2 GB.
Can you possibly further elaborate on this ?


"Ben Myers" <> wrote in message
news:...
> The difference between 540MB and 528MB is the math used to compute these
> numbers. Micro$oft uses 1024 or 1K to compute size of the drive,
> multiplying
> 512 bytes (size of a sector) by the number of heads, tracks, and
> sectors/track,
> then dividing by 1024. In the real world, we use 1000 as a divisor to
> compute
> megabytes.
>
> EZ-BIOS modifies the boot sector of a drive, and neither an FDISK nor a
> FORMAT
> command changes it. If you really and truly want to get rid of EZ-BIOS,
> use
> FDISK /MBR.
>
> Otherwise, I am unsure as to what DOS 6.22 is doing by failing to
> recognize the
> partitions... Ben Myers
>
> On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 13:16:41 -0500, "john orwen" <>
> wrote:
>
>>I have a Gatway 2000 P5-60 computer with the 03/31/98 bios update
>>1.00.10.AF2T . The only hard drive mounted on it is a WD 540MB and has
>>been
>>initialized with EZ-BIOS in a hidden partition. The drive originally had
>>Windows 95 installed on it. I booted the computer to a DOS 6.22 system
>>diskette and FDISk'd the C: drive to remove the only visible partition on
>>it. Then using FDISK created a new system active partition.
>>I then used the DOS 6.22 format command to format the C: drive. The drive
>>formatted to only 528 MB. When I botted the computer up on the C: drive
>>because EZ-BIOS still appeared in the boot process, everything worked just
>>fine. But why is Ez_BIOS still on the drive FDISK'd and reformatted ?
>>Also
>>when I powered down, I attached a 9 GB Maxtor drive to the the slave
>>connector on the IDE ribbon. It has been FDISK'd and formatted on another
>>computer with DOS 6.22 on it. It was made into 5 partitions with part1 to
>>3
>>formatted to 2GB each and part's 4 and 5 as 1 GB each. Now when I boot
>>the
>>computer up the BIOS recognizes the the Maxtor 9GB hard drive as hard
>>drive
>>2, but when DOS boots up it cannot find any of the extended partitons.
>>All
>>it can find is C: and the CD-ROM as drive D: and nothing more. DOS 6.22
>>recognizes hard drives up to 9GB's and partitions up to 2 GB. What is
>>going
>>on ? The BIOS recognizes the drive on boot up but then it disappears when
>>Dos has booted. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong here ?
>>

John,

1. You can definitely wipe out EZ-BIOS completely by downloading and running
DBAN. EZ-BIOS does not tamper with the motherboard BIOS. It cannot get at it
to do so in a reliable general purpose manner.

2. Socket 4 Pentium systems are quite old, and I am just about 100% certain that
the BIOS is limited to 2.1GB, no matter which version is in the system. Only
with the later Socket 5 motherboards did Intel increase the BIOS limit to the
next threshold, 8.4GB. Even the Intel "Plato" Socket 5 board, designed and
built just after yours, is limited to 2.1GB.

3. You can probably get a PCI controller card for IDE drives for pennies these
days. It is really and truly the best way to get larger capacity hard drives
running on your system. Promise is the leading brand name. SIIG is OK, too.

.... Ben Myers


On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:15:05 -0500, "john orwen" <> wrote:

>I ran FDISK/MBR and it modified the boot sector of the primary hard drive
>and Pctools confirmed this and saved a copy of boot.cps to a floppy
>diskette, but it did NOT get rid of EZ-BIOS. The EZ-BIOS still pops up on
>boot up of the system.
>
>Is it possible that EZ-BIOS has been flashed into the bios chip on this
>computer ?
>
>If that is the case then how do you truly get rid of it ?
>
>Also does the Gateway 03/31/98 bios update of 1.00.10.AF2T still limit the
>size of any attached hard drive to 1023 measley cylinders ? It seems like
>comprable bioses of that time frame allowed hard drives of up to 30 GB and
>however many cylinders that computes to.. It seems like setup had something
>like Large Block addressing in it to allow hard drives larger than 2 GB.
>Can you possibly further elaborate on this ?
>
>
>"Ben Myers" <> wrote in message
>news:.. .
>> The difference between 540MB and 528MB is the math used to compute these
>> numbers. Micro$oft uses 1024 or 1K to compute size of the drive,
>> multiplying
>> 512 bytes (size of a sector) by the number of heads, tracks, and
>> sectors/track,
>> then dividing by 1024. In the real world, we use 1000 as a divisor to
>> compute
>> megabytes.
>>
>> EZ-BIOS modifies the boot sector of a drive, and neither an FDISK nor a
>> FORMAT
>> command changes it. If you really and truly want to get rid of EZ-BIOS,
>> use
>> FDISK /MBR.
>>
>> Otherwise, I am unsure as to what DOS 6.22 is doing by failing to
>> recognize the
>> partitions... Ben Myers
>>
>> On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 13:16:41 -0500, "john orwen" <>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>I have a Gatway 2000 P5-60 computer with the 03/31/98 bios update
>>>1.00.10.AF2T . The only hard drive mounted on it is a WD 540MB and has
>>>been
>>>initialized with EZ-BIOS in a hidden partition. The drive originally had
>>>Windows 95 installed on it. I booted the computer to a DOS 6.22 system
>>>diskette and FDISk'd the C: drive to remove the only visible partition on
>>>it. Then using FDISK created a new system active partition.
>>>I then used the DOS 6.22 format command to format the C: drive. The drive
>>>formatted to only 528 MB. When I botted the computer up on the C: drive
>>>because EZ-BIOS still appeared in the boot process, everything worked just
>>>fine. But why is Ez_BIOS still on the drive FDISK'd and reformatted ?
>>>Also
>>>when I powered down, I attached a 9 GB Maxtor drive to the the slave
>>>connector on the IDE ribbon. It has been FDISK'd and formatted on another
>>>computer with DOS 6.22 on it. It was made into 5 partitions with part1 to
>>>3
>>>formatted to 2GB each and part's 4 and 5 as 1 GB each. Now when I boot
>>>the
>>>computer up the BIOS recognizes the the Maxtor 9GB hard drive as hard
>>>drive
>>>2, but when DOS boots up it cannot find any of the extended partitons.
>>>All
>>>it can find is C: and the CD-ROM as drive D: and nothing more. DOS 6.22
>>>recognizes hard drives up to 9GB's and partitions up to 2 GB. What is
>>>going
>>>on ? The BIOS recognizes the drive on boot up but then it disappears when
>>>Dos has booted. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong here ?
>>>
>

Hi!

> Is it possible that EZ-BIOS has been flashed into the bios chip on this
> computer ?

Definitely not. I dimly remember that some versions let you choose where to
install it.

If you can find an EZ-BIOS boot diskette, that will let you remove it.

> Also does the Gateway 03/31/98 bios update of 1.00.10.AF2T still
> limit the size of any attached hard drive to 1023 measley cylinders ?

Many 1998-era BIOSes I've seen have an 8GB limit...

I'm not sure about your time frame, but the secondhand 10GB and larger
drives I have kicking around all have dates of 2000 or newer. I've got a
*lot* of them, too. I have drives from 1998 and many of them are 4/6/7.5
(!!) and 8GB in size.

You need to use LBA beyond the 528/540MB line on most systems.

William

Here is what I did. I put on a 10 GB drive and realizing that even though
the bios saw it correctly, DOS 6.2 is limited to 2.1 GB Max drive size. I
know of no way to trick FDISK into seeing anything larger than 2.1 GB to
mess with. Also using FAT16 which is what DOS 6.2 uses I know of no way to
trick format to format anything larger than 2.1 GB. I booted the system
with a diskette set made from Partition Magic which started DRDOS to boot
partition magic. I used that to partition the 10 GB drive into 5 - 2 GB
partitions. I powered down the system and installed a generic PCI Raid UDMA
IDE controller and attached the drive I just partitioned to it. I booted
the system back up with a DOS 6.2 system diskette and formatted each
partition successfully.. I then installed DOS 6.2 on the C: drive and now
have everything working the way I want it to.
"William R. Walsh" < m>
wrote in message news:FVkMi.113861$Xa3.39004@attbi_s22...
> Hi!
>
>> Is it possible that EZ-BIOS has been flashed into the bios chip on this
>> computer ?
>
> Definitely not. I dimly remember that some versions let you choose where
> to install it.
>
> If you can find an EZ-BIOS boot diskette, that will let you remove it.
>
>> Also does the Gateway 03/31/98 bios update of 1.00.10.AF2T still
>> limit the size of any attached hard drive to 1023 measley cylinders ?
>
> Many 1998-era BIOSes I've seen have an 8GB limit...
>
> I'm not sure about your time frame, but the secondhand 10GB and larger
> drives I have kicking around all have dates of 2000 or newer. I've got a
> *lot* of them, too. I have drives from 1998 and many of them are 4/6/7.5
> (!!) and 8GB in size.
>
> You need to use LBA beyond the 528/540MB line on most systems.
>
> William
>

Re: "Here is what I did. I put on a 10 GB drive and realizing that even
though the bios saw it correctly, DOS 6.2 is limited to 2.1 GB Max drive
size."

Not max drive size, max parition size. You can have multiple 2.1GB
partitions.

But there is a way around this. You can "extract" MS-DOS version 7 from
Windows 98SE, and it FULLY supports FAT32. You can have it "stand
alone", on a set of floppies, with all of the DOS utilities, and you can
install it, and it will support drives up to 32GB as a single partition
(not really advisable, but possible).

For people who want DOS, DOS 6.x was NOT the end of MS-DOS, MS-DOS 7
exists and should be used. You get the OS itself by formatting a
bootable floppy under Windows 98SE, most of the utilities are in
\Windows\Command, and the rest are in two hidden folders on the Windows
98SE CD-ROM. MS-DOS 7 supports Fat 32, and thus easily supports hard
drives up to and including 120GB with single partitions up to 32GB.


john orwen wrote:
> Here is what I did. I put on a 10 GB drive and realizing that even though
> the bios saw it correctly, DOS 6.2 is limited to 2.1 GB Max drive size. I
> know of no way to trick FDISK into seeing anything larger than 2.1 GB to
> mess with. Also using FAT16 which is what DOS 6.2 uses I know of no way to
> trick format to format anything larger than 2.1 GB. I booted the system
> with a diskette set made from Partition Magic which started DRDOS to boot
> partition magic. I used that to partition the 10 GB drive into 5 - 2 GB
> partitions. I powered down the system and installed a generic PCI Raid UDMA
> IDE controller and attached the drive I just partitioned to it. I booted
> the system back up with a DOS 6.2 system diskette and formatted each
> partition successfully.. I then installed DOS 6.2 on the C: drive and now
> have everything working the way I want it to.
> "William R. Walsh" < m>
> wrote in message news:FVkMi.113861$Xa3.39004@attbi_s22...
>> Hi!
>>
>>> Is it possible that EZ-BIOS has been flashed into the bios chip on this
>>> computer ?
>> Definitely not. I dimly remember that some versions let you choose where
>> to install it.
>>
>> If you can find an EZ-BIOS boot diskette, that will let you remove it.
>>
>>> Also does the Gateway 03/31/98 bios update of 1.00.10.AF2T still
>>> limit the size of any attached hard drive to 1023 measley cylinders ?
>> Many 1998-era BIOSes I've seen have an 8GB limit...
>>
>> I'm not sure about your time frame, but the secondhand 10GB and larger
>> drives I have kicking around all have dates of 2000 or newer. I've got a
>> *lot* of them, too. I have drives from 1998 and many of them are 4/6/7.5
>> (!!) and 8GB in size.
>>
>> You need to use LBA beyond the 528/540MB line on most systems.
>>
>> William
>>
>
>

*-* On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:33:57 -0400,
*-* In Article 470abef2$0$16453$,
*-* Barry Watzman wrote
*-* About Re: gateway 2000 Larger Hardrive that 528 MB

[ ... ]

> You can "extract" MS-DOS version 7
> from Windows 98SE, and it FULLY supports FAT32. You can have it
> "stand alone", on a set of floppies, with all of the DOS utilities,
> and you can install it, and it will support drives up to 32GB as a
> single partition (not really advisable, but possible).

> For people who want DOS, DOS 6.x was NOT the end of MS-DOS, MS-DOS 7
> exists and should be used. You get the OS itself by formatting a
> bootable floppy under Windows 98SE, most of the utilities are in
> \Windows\Command, and the rest are in two hidden folders on the
> Windows 98SE CD-ROM. MS-DOS 7 supports Fat 32, and thus easily
> supports hard drives up to and including 120GB with single
> partitions up to 32GB.

Does the above also apply to Windows ME?

Ken Whiton

FIDO: 1:132/152
InterNet: L (remove the obvious to reply)

No, not really. Because while Windows 98SE did have a true "DOS" mode
(not a command prompt window, but a "true" DOS mode), Windows ME had
none at all, and therefore did not include most of the DOS utilities.
You can format a "startup floppy diskette" with ME, but you can't
extract the 3 dozen or so MS-DOS utilities to make a complete MS-DOS
package. You really need 98SE.


Ken Whiton wrote:
> *-* On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:33:57 -0400,
> *-* In Article 470abef2$0$16453$,
> *-* Barry Watzman wrote
> *-* About Re: gateway 2000 Larger Hardrive that 528 MB
>
> [ ... ]
>
>> You can "extract" MS-DOS version 7
>> from Windows 98SE, and it FULLY supports FAT32. You can have it
>> "stand alone", on a set of floppies, with all of the DOS utilities,
>> and you can install it, and it will support drives up to 32GB as a
>> single partition (not really advisable, but possible).
>
>> For people who want DOS, DOS 6.x was NOT the end of MS-DOS, MS-DOS 7
>> exists and should be used. You get the OS itself by formatting a
>> bootable floppy under Windows 98SE, most of the utilities are in
>> \Windows\Command, and the rest are in two hidden folders on the
>> Windows 98SE CD-ROM. MS-DOS 7 supports Fat 32, and thus easily
>> supports hard drives up to and including 120GB with single
>> partitions up to 32GB.
>
> Does the above also apply to Windows ME?
>
> Ken Whiton
>
> FIDO: 1:132/152
> InterNet: L (remove the obvious to reply)

Or FreeDOS. Or the latest DR-DOS... Ben Myers

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:38:35 -0400, Barry Watzman <>
wrote:

>No, not really. Because while Windows 98SE did have a true "DOS" mode
>(not a command prompt window, but a "true" DOS mode), Windows ME had
>none at all, and therefore did not include most of the DOS utilities.
>You can format a "startup floppy diskette" with ME, but you can't
>extract the 3 dozen or so MS-DOS utilities to make a complete MS-DOS
>package. You really need 98SE.
>
>
>Ken Whiton wrote:
>> *-* On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:33:57 -0400,
>> *-* In Article 470abef2$0$16453$,
>> *-* Barry Watzman wrote
>> *-* About Re: gateway 2000 Larger Hardrive that 528 MB
>>
>> [ ... ]
>>
>>> You can "extract" MS-DOS version 7
>>> from Windows 98SE, and it FULLY supports FAT32. You can have it
>>> "stand alone", on a set of floppies, with all of the DOS utilities,
>>> and you can install it, and it will support drives up to 32GB as a
>>> single partition (not really advisable, but possible).
>>
>>> For people who want DOS, DOS 6.x was NOT the end of MS-DOS, MS-DOS 7
>>> exists and should be used. You get the OS itself by formatting a
>>> bootable floppy under Windows 98SE, most of the utilities are in
>>> \Windows\Command, and the rest are in two hidden folders on the
>>> Windows 98SE CD-ROM. MS-DOS 7 supports Fat 32, and thus easily
>>> supports hard drives up to and including 120GB with single
>>> partitions up to 32GB.
>>
>> Does the above also apply to Windows ME?
>>
>> Ken Whiton
>>
>> FIDO: 1:132/152
>> InterNet: L (remove the obvious to reply)