FortKnox's Journal: Dynamic Drive Overlay Help!

I have a Dynamic Drive Overlay on my harddrive on my windows box. I don't know which one, nor do I even know if I have the disk for it. I tried to upgrade to XP yesterday (and saturday), but XP won't install to a drive that has a DDO on it. I don't have to cash to go out and buy another harddrive, and put it on the box, so I must ask. Does anyone know a good method for ripping the DDO out of the MBR and replace the MBR with a standard windows format (no, fdisk /mbr doesn't work, nor does "fixmbr" or "fixboot" on NT/XP).

Oh, and I want to save all the data on all three partitions of that harddrive. Wiping the whole drive isn't an option.

Any help is GREATLY appreciated.

A Thought

[bofkentucky]

Throw the harddisk in a machine with a workable bios or borrow an IDE card from a buddy. Grab a mandrake or some other distro install cd. Run through the install until you get to the disk partitioner section, create a small linux partition and let it install lilo/grub. That might do it.

Re:A Thought

[FortKnox]

XP won't install with Lilo/grub in the MBR either, unfortunately. Thanks anyway.

Its quite frustrating, because, as I understand it, XP/2K doesn't even use the MBR. They throw the data from it into the last part of the disk. I don't see the big issue here. Bah, I should send the box/disk back to MS and demand a refund.

Re:A Thought

[bofkentucky]

With lilo/grub the mbr, a dos disk might be able to do the allmighty fdisk /mbr, then the XP/2K install

fdisk /mbr

[TechnoLust]

It's been a while so this may not be totally correct, but IIRC, fdisk /mbr restores an old MBR that is saved somewhere else on the disk. It doesn't actually rebuild it. I ran into this one time when I formatted and installed Win95 over MSDOS 6.2 and it botched. I fdisk /mbr'ed it and suddenly it's trying to boot MSDOS again!

But let me give you some advice... DON'T INSTALL XP! My mother has it on her new PC, and I just don't really like it. 2000 will do almost everything XP will and I like it a lot better. Then only reason I considered XP was the fast user switching (kinda like su for MS boxen.) But I just don't like the UI. Also, I'm an NT Network Admin and I can't for the life of me get it to share the dial up connection with my dad's Win98 box. I even ran the Wizard on both machines, and still no dice. I can ping both boxes from each other, but it will not let me ping anything on the net. I finally gave up and started building a Linux router.

If you must install it though, I'd take a look at PQMagic. It is good partition management software. If that doesn't work, you'll have to wipe it.

Re:fdisk /mbr

[bofkentucky]

Switch off the Teletubbies theme and select what eye candy you want turned on. The powertools with virtual desktops and a full on graphing calc are big plusses in my book, and uptimes have been good. But I'm moving from loseMe instead of 2kan't so YMMV

WinME

[TechnoLust]

Don't even get me started with ME... I made the horrible mistake of installing in ONCE. It lasted 3 days and then... bye-bye. I love 2k. As for the graphing calc, I use the one that comes with Mandrake 8.2 on the rare occasion that I need one.

Re:fdisk /mbr

[FortKnox]

Can't go 2K... doesn't play those legacy games. My windows box is my gaming box, remember.

Which Games give you trouble?

[TechnoLust]

I don't recall having trouble with any games I've installed, but I don't have much other than some FPS's. Let me know, because I'd like to take a look at them. I love a challenge. :-)

D'oh! stupid 2 minute between posts filter! Some of us are fast typers, Taco!

Re:Which Games give you trouble?

[FortKnox]

StarCraft I never got to work.

Also check jNES and NESticle to see if they work.

I don't even want to get into any of the older ultimas...

Re:Which Games give you trouble?

[TechnoLust]

I have StarCraft... I haven't installed it on my Win2k machine though. I got addicted in college and never slept, so I was afraid to reinstall. :-) I'll give it a whirl though, just for SNG (shits 'n' giggles). I haven't tried the NES ones, although I think I remember having trouble with the N64 emu I had.

Re:Which Games give you trouble?

[BlackSol]

If you have time Try N4S 5 - Porsche Unleashed

let me know if you need it - Its useless to me till it works on 2k.

EA says no support for 2k btw.

Mebbe

[gmhowell]

Maybe you'll have to hook it up to a network, and share the files over the ethernet. Then, like the other comment said, use a linux disk of some sort to really put that mbr in its place.

OTOH, it's possible (i'm no hard drive expert) that the overlay software writes into some bios thing on the drive itself. This could prevent using GNU fdisk.

All in all, good luck.

Have you tried PM?

[drachenstern]

Partition magic probably will not help if the others have not helped, but my advice is to see if it thinks it's got cahones enough to try.

providing this doesnt work (and it prob won't), have you got a burner?

providing this is no (prob so), then, what (area of which) state do you live in, i may be able to whack it once or twice for ya

well, keep us informed