Thanks,MasterC.I guess GT got them okay.
GT,just a mention: that's ver.7 so it'll read the Linux partitions as ext2 even if you run ext3.Support for the latter just appeared recently with ver.8.
Moses,glad to see another dip his oar into the water,as it wereI thought we were going to set a record for LQ's longest 3-person thread.
lynch

Moses i tried the link you gave me above, and i have already tried that procedure...it didn't work because it couldn't find my direcotires (because there all weird characters) I shall try what you said before that post....

It seems 'doze has this problem a lot. . . The link I posted has a
"solution" that MAY be a solution. . . [google is your friend]

Apparently anytime a disk changes size (repartition, mirror to a different
size partition, etc.), this error occurs. . . Silly.

Oh, and I tried changing the ID tag from c (win95 FAT32 LBA) to b (win95
FAT32) on my system, and it didn't cause any error, so I'm convinced it's
not a partition ID problem.

Cheers,
Moses

Ok i changed it to fat32 LBA, but how do i check if my bios is detecting it...

Ok i had some problems with copying the PM files to floppy, (it kept freezing while copying) but i did it from command line so now i'm gonna check it out...

i'll post up anything here when i'm done...

Ok yet ANOTHER PROBLEM, this time with the floppies, i put them in, and they don't boot, it says something like 'This Disk Is Not Bootable, Remove it and press any key
well slong the lines of that...any ideas on making it bootable....

Ooops, I sent that out before I got your latest. I think you should still try
changing the IDs to be correct (your disk drive should be LBA).

Did you stop because you couldn't rename the msdos.sys file? If so (and
the above doesn't work), I would suggest you just try skipping that step,
since the system isn't bootable anyway. . . Of course, this is starting to
get you into extreme measures, but I always try to avoid reinstalling the
OS. . .

Moses

some quick thoughts-unless you moved data;say in a resize partition operation, i don't think pm did anything to the files to give you gibberish-even if you moved it , i don't know that it would do so as i have done a number of pm operations and never saw such happen(i'm not playing guru here, i can be 100% wrong, i'm just trying to find a direction that works or brings someone who does know into the picture). i did get the very gibberish you have when i used a norton disk recovery thing to back up my win 98 to a zip drive and then went in later to look at some of the files on the zipdisk. the files on the zip disk were labeled in whatever whether i looked at them via windows or mounted on linux. now i don't know if this has anything to do with you here, but i would also say that almost everything i have read says windows insists on having the first partition on a harddrive and i see you have it on the last, if i read things correctly- that may be why the recovery disk is doing you no good. before i forget, it might be a good idea to make a copy of those gibberish files(all of them) before you get too manipulative with everything-somebody may be able to sort them out if they are valuable enough-the windows people may be able to do so(after a penance by you for fooling with linux,which will probably be blamed by all "responsible" parties in any case)-i'm not tormenting you here, i'm on your side; i just don't know enough to give you any concrete help, i can only throw out some bits of experience and maybe something will lead somewhere-e.g., if it were me, i'd try the win bootdisk keeping in mind it might not work because of the fat partition's placement on the hd and if so, i'd be thinking to move that partiton to the start of the disk using pm after i cleared to free space everything in front of it-BUT, BUT, it is not my data that is at risk here and apparently it may not be your data either, so proceed with caution and backup what ever you can. these guys here are good, so pay attention and take your time and good luck.

When the system is booting (BEFORE LILO), it should display information
about your hardware. If it doesn't (only shows a graphic, for example), then hit the relevant setup key (Delete or F1, usually). In the first menu
(usually something like Basic CMOS setup), you should see a list of what
basic devices it detects (HD, Kbd, floppy). If it shows your HD, then it should say LBA or Logical Block Addressing, or something to that effect.
If it doesn't show your HD, then you need to either go to the Boot menu
or to the hard drive autodetect option.

If this doesn't help, you may need to resort to your Motherboard's user
manual, since every MB has a different BIOS and I don't have experience
with all of them. . .

Anyway, I think this is mostly irrelevant, since it DID work at one time. . .

Cheers,
Moses

Did you do a tar xzvf? You have to do that and then open the folder and build each floppy with no dir.ie.,each floppy should just be a bunch of files with no pmdisk-1-boot or pmdisk-2-app directories.I check the disks before I uploaded them to make sure they worked.I encountered no errors during upload so I dont know why they wont work.Try opening the gunzipped dir and cp each file seperately or do a select all in konquerer and drag n drop them to the floppy.

edit: GT,I just re-checked the disks I used to send you and they boot just fine.
BTW-your are about 15 hours ahead of me
lynch

I'm in the states, and it's late (early, whatever, so I've got to get some
sleep.

I'll check in tomorrow morning, hoping that you've got it fixed.

As tincat2 says, if you have any way (e.g., CDROM burner) to backup the
windows disk, you should do that sooner rather than later. It's pretty easy
to do in linux, and it should be done.

Good luck,
Moses

don't think you have a bios problem-i don't remember, but ithink the xcopy .exe transfers files to the hd the first being autoexe.batch and things happen fromthere, but DON'T go by me; do a search on how to boot windows from a disk if you can't get the floppy you've got to work- i've got to crash too, it's 6:06 am here. good luck.

Hi, this is going quite well for you GT, although I had hoped for a faster recovery

The thing that has caught my eye in these last posts was the mention of winbloze on other partitions. I know that winbloze REALLY doesn't like to be on other partitions, so, as you suggested earlier, you might wanna try installing another version of winbloze onto the first partition and see if you can view the files that way. I definitely would have backed up those gibberish files by now, so if you haven't, take these guys good advices, and do it now.

Here's what I'd do, in this order:
1. Back everything up.
2. Get those PM disks working, use them if you can. That'd be first and foremost to me. If that doesn't get it going, then;
3. Install a version of winbloze to your first partition, and attempt to view the files that way. If you can't see them, or if they are gibberish, try copying them to your newly installed winbloze partition. THEN, reinstall linux, or use a floppy distro/Live Eval/CDROM recovery disc, and see if you can view the files that way.

4. Post back and let us know your progress, if any.

Cool

Ok will do MasterC, and i tried that lynch and they wont work....they just wont boot, when i copied them i didn't use konqueror i cp'ed them to the floppy....i will try again...and how could i resize my Linux partition so i have JUST enough room to install windows M.E so i can use MasterC's idea...well my idea which MasterC told me to go ahead with In asking how, i mean what partitioning program....

Do you know how to use fdisk? you can use that to re-partition your hd. do "fdisk /dev/hda" and work from there.