Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!ox-prg!oxuniv!amemjm
From: amemjm@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Trouble booting from HD
Message-ID: <1991Jun28.114414.856@vax.oxford.ac.uk>
Date: 28 Jun 91 10:44:13 GMT
Organization: Oxford University Computing Service
Lines: 17

Re: Not booting from HD

Hi,

I too had this problem: I have a 40M WD harddisk, and tried to reformat it to
5x8M partitions (don't ask why!) under DOS3.3. The format/sys went Ok, but
unbootable! Reformatting to 1x32, 1x8 worked fine. I have no idea why, but i
suspect that the underlying location or size of the partition table was altered
by the re-format. Yes, I did try a low-level format, to no avail. And after a
few minutes (yup minutes!) the whole disk became cross-linked in the 5x8
format. interestingly, the reformat to 1x32, 1x8 restored the data fully,
including the crosslinked files. Moral: if it works, don't mess!

The only thing I can suggest is formatting the primary DOS partition to be as
large as your DOS version allows, ie 32M in 3.3. 

regards, Mark McI