Win95 thinks partition still huge
Hi all,
This question, in brief is - where is the vfat filesystem documented?
My Sharp M200 comes with a recovery CD which rewrites the hard disk
right back to original everything if I use it. So now I have a routine
which, in case of disaster I can edit into the partition table
enough to insert, between the Fat32 for Win95 and the hibernate (partition
4), two primary partitions for Linux. (I now have it in a little file,
just overwrite the mbr with it). I learned how to do it from
the documentation for Mbrscan by Nobumichi Kozawa, and Tomsrtbt
(www.toms.net)
THis has been going well for some time, using Lilo on bootable partition
2 (terrified of putting it in the mbr).
However I had to read some big pdf files and xpdf has often complained
of encryption so I sailed in and loaded Acrobat Reader in my Win95.
The disaster is that after reading all this pdf stuff, I shut down and
on next boot was met with "missing operating system".
I tried the Linux boot disk and it "could not" .. "root filesystem on
device 03:02" (error message from my memory). At this point the penny
drops with a resounding clang - something, probably Win95 swap - (they
were huge pdf files) has overwritten Linux's filesystem and the Lilo boot
loader.
Tom's root boot saved half the day, using his fdisk I reset the bootable
partition to WIndows partition and can run WIndows.
Now I had about 700 meg allowed for Windows, and had used only about
400meg, but the problem lies in the fact that Windows thinks it has the
whole disk (it says so if you do dir in a dos window, and in "My
Computer"). I have tried a couple of times lately to find some info
on vfat file system, so I could persuade it about its size, but so far
failed. I dont want to have to lay out for Norton's but I may have to
because I think it has a disk editor that chases through the
vfat setup.
Please does anyone know where is it documented in such a way that I could
edit its tables?
Thank you for your time,
clare
--
Clare Johnstone, University Communications Services,
The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway CRAWLEY WA 6009
Tel +61 8 9380 2607, Fax +61 8 9380 1109, Internet clare@ucs.uwa.edu.au
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