DDS/OSS fails to boot OS/2

Hi

The DDS/OSS is installed to an NT4 NTFS partition on an ATA drive. It boots NT4 fine, Linux MDK 10.2 on the same drive boots with a seemingly (at this time) minor complaint about a "duplicate ID". On other ATA drives Fedora Core 4 and Solaris 10 boot with similar complaints. However I also have several OS/2 installs on LVD SCSI drives that all fail to boot from DDS/OSS complaining that they are "unable to operate my drive" shortly after the recovery and subsequent OS/2 splash screens display. This is I believe normaly where OS/2 starts to load the configuration files.

This was annoying enough when I was able to reboot and select in the BIOS to boot SCSI first and still be able to boot my OS/2 drives. Now however even after changing the boot order in the BIOS, I still cannot boot any OS/2 drive, getting the same "unable to operate the drive" errors. This escalation in the problem occurred after booting back into NT for the first time since the install.

I have selected to hide all NT, Linux and Solaris partitions from the OS/2 boot partitions. I don't think the Linux or Solaris partions are an issue but I discovered I had to do this early on for NT since it uses the same FS flag type for NTFS as OS/2 does for HPFS (type 7 I seem to remember) and leaving it unhidden would cause my OS/2 drive letter to be reassigned, no good. So all my OS/2 drive assignment alphas are all correct. Still I get these errors.

This is important to me since OS/2 is my primary use OS and I bought Acronis ONLY so I would not have to keep hopping in/out of the BIOS to change the boot process.

I suspect NT caused the escalation issue by altering the MBR's on the OS/2 drives when it booted, and I will need to hide all OS/2 partitions from NT. I also suspect and dearly hope I wll be able to restore the MBR's on the OS/2 drives and fix the escalation of the problem, but I do not believe it will help with the original DDS/OSS & OS/2 boot failure issue, what can I do about this?

Followup notes:

I checked and I had already selected to hide all OS/2 HPFS partitions from NT prior to the escalation of the problem. I have been able to correct the issue on OS/2 primary type boot partitions by moving the drives to another OS/2 system and using FDISK to reset the STARTABLE status of the drives.

However with OS/2 logical drives it is not possible to set such as STARTABLE. Does this imply that DSS/OSS relies on having a non Acronis bootmanager/chainloader in order to boot logical drives? If so I wasted my money on your product.

From the OSS page on your site: "Acronis' exclusive! — Install and boot operating system from any partition of any hard disk." : "Support operating systems both on primary and logical partitions of any hard disk drive."

This is of course beside the issue of whatever disabled the STARTABLE status of the primarys, which from what I understand is some sort of chainloader code itself.

I don't know if the disabling of the OS/2 chainloader in the primary partitions is being caused by NT or DDS/OSS, but if it persists it could make your product less than useless to me, in fact it makes it a dangerous liability. I have installed power switches on all my SCSI drives and from now on will always power the OS/2 drives down before booting NT, which should prevent the reoccurance if, and its a big IF, NT is the problem, if it is DDS/OSS that is not likely to help, and would defeat the purpose of why I bought the software.

I don't mean to be nasty but this is most annoying. I just wish I tried this software on a test box before installing it to my primary use system. I am downloading the manuals now, why could they not have been be placed on the CD? Oh well I guess they will be more current like this, and I haven't lost but about 9 hours of my life.... so far.

Thanks
Matthew

 

Hello Matthew,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Management Software.

Could you please download Acronis Report utility available at http://www.acronis.com/files/support/AcronisReport.exe and run it, create a report and send it to us? This would provide us with detailed information on the hard disk partition structure.

Please send gathered information to support@acronis.com along with the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Semyonov Vasily

 

Hello Semyonov,

I appreciate the offer for help. However for this report utility to be useful it will, A: require Windows NT be booted, B: require that I power up my OS/2 SCSI boot drives before/while NT is booted, C: most likely require that my OS/2 partitions be exposed to NT, ie not even hidden from NT.

Actually I have not risked having my OS/2 drives powered up when I boot the Acronis loader as I suspect it rather than NT caused my previous problems since the OS/2 drives were selected as and supposed to be hidden from NT from the DDS/OSS menu.

Considering my previous experience with this, I do not see this as an acceptable method for resolution of my problem. I do not care to risk being unable to repair to repair the damage to these OS/2 drives. Surely this cannot be the first time this issue has arisen. Is there not any safer suggestions in you products knowledge base? Also just to clairify the issue I have not tried again, since repairing the primary partitions STARTABLE status, to boot even the primary partition install of OS/2 from the DDS/OSS. I have restrained from doing so from fear of a reoccurance of the previous problem. I don't have that long a life to waste.


Primary ATA Master 80gb: IBM hd
/dev/hda1 = Windows NT C: 02gb
/dev/hda5 = Linux MDK / 20gb
/dev/hda6 = Linux Swap 0.5gb
/dev/hda7 = Linux MDK /home 20gb
aprox. 38gb unallocated free space

Secondary ATA Master 60gb: IBM hd
/dev/hdc1 = unallocated free space 02gb
/dev/hdc5 = XAndros Linux / 06gb
/dev/hdc6 = XAndros Linux /home 20gb
aprox. 32gb unallocated free space.

SCSI LVD drive ID 0 37gb Seagate Cheetah hd
/dev/sda1 = OS/2 C: Boot (Primary) 02gb
/dev/sda5 = OS/2 D: Boot (Logical) 02gb
/dev/sda6 = OS/2 E: Boot | 02gb
/dev/sda7 = OS/2 F: Boot | 02gb
/dev/sda8 = OS/2 G: Apps/Data 28gb


SCSI LVD drives other than 0 are not being used to boot at this time, serving only as SCA connected removable backup or project data drives.


I had Solaris on the drive that currently holds XAndros, I recently installed it over Solaris to more easily exchange files like your report utility with NT since I have internet connection problems with NT.

I have Fedora Core on another ATA hd that I have been manually swapping with the XAndros drive while I decide which Linux OS(s) to keep.

Thanks
Matthew

 

Hello Matthew,

Could you please do the following in order to avoid problems with your OS/2 disks while creating the report?

- Download Acronis Report utility from http://www.acronis.com/files/support/AcronisReport.exe;
- Run Acronis Report utility and select the "Create bootable floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the floppy drive and proceed with creating the bootable diskette;
- Power up all of your hard disk drives
- Boot the computer under consideration from this diskette and wait for report creation process to complete;
- Send us the report.txt file from the floppy disk.

Please collect the information requested above and contact us from our web-site: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/support/ . Please don't forget to send the link to this thread along with gathered information. This would allow us to investigate the problem and help you with the solution.

Please also let me know your Acronis request # which will be sent to you in autoreply to your letter to Acronis Support Team.

Thank you.
--
Semyonov Vasily

 

Hi Semyonov,

I have been very busy at work, but finally found time to address this.
The assigned support ID is:

[Acronis #386448] DSS/OSS fails to boot OS/2

Thanks
Matthew

 

And.....? It has been several weeks now, do you folks anything to suggest to rectify my problems with this software? I have not received any email except the confirmation of delivery of my report.

Matthew

 

Hello Matthew,

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response. I have reviewed your request in our database. It is currently under investigation and awaiting reply from our Development Team. I've left a comment to speed up the process. However I can't tell you the exact time frame when this issue will be resolved. We are really sorry for the inconveniences.

Thank you.
--
Semyonov Vasily

 

Hi all,

I have the same problem. Yesterday I installed an eCS 1.2 MR (OS/2 4.5) in my HD on a primary partition. My HD is a 80GB ATA IDE.

All was working well until I installed Acronis OS Selector (or I booted with Windows XP, I don't know beacuse to install OS Selector I had to boot this system). From this point my OS/2 system is not able to boot although OS Selector detects it right. No message is showed in screen, only it keeps in blank.

Any idea?

My HD has following partition table:

Primary partitions
----------------
* 20 GB: Windows XP Professional SP2

* 20 GB: Windows XP Professional x64

* 10 GB: eComStation 1.2 MR (OS/2 4.5)

Logical partitions
----------------

* 15 GB: SuSE Linux 10

* 1 GB: swap partition for Linux

* 10 GB: free space

 

Hello rondo,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Management Software.

Could you please download Acronis Report utility available at http://www.acronis.com/files/support/AcronisReport.exe and run it (from your Windows XP OS), create a report and send it to us? This would provide us with detailed information on the hard disk partition structure.

Please collect the information requested above and contact us from our web-site: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/support/ . Please don't forget to send the link to this thread along with gathered information. This would allow us to investigate the problem and help you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Vasily Semyonov