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DOS Hell

ratman743ratman743
edited May 2017 in Software
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Setting up a Windows 3.1 machine in PCem, I run into this.
For some reason or another, DOS simply refuses to detect OAKCDROM.SYS. Interestingly enough, when I try to run AUTOEXEC.BAT, it simply says: File not found. Yet I can edit, and dir it. It's the same with OAKCDROM.SYS.

w0t

[EDIT]
It's almost like the virtual HDD is bad?
I'm getting errors from even official CDROM driver installation programs, saying they can't read/write to the hard disk.
And yes, the CDROM is enabled in the VM, as well as everything else that is needed. How is a bad virtual disk even possible?

Comments

  • hvc001hvc001
    I've never used OAKCDROM.SYS before, but the file size seems really small for a CD-ROM driver (158 bytes?!). I think you should try a different one. On my DOS machine, I use VIDE-CDD.SYS which is 23,405 bytes.
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    Well, run chkdsk or re-fidisk/format. There are a few ways things can get messed up in a VM, usually if partition information has conflicting data - so be sure to use the DOS 5 FDISK. Also, double check under DOS 6.22. I seem to recall there were a few issues with DOS 5 and a few very specific drive geometries near maximum sizes.

    Are you sure the "file not found" error is not coming from a command in the autoexec.bat?
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]
    I have an idea.

    Recreate the same setup again and see if the problem happens again. If it doesn't, then you can safely say that it was probably a PCem glitch.

    And YES, it is possible for a virtual hard drive to go bad (corruption on the host file system, etc.). Also make sure that PCem has read/write access to the virtual hard disk file on the host machine.

    Hope this helps.

    EDIT: Fixed a grammar error.
  • ratman743ratman743
    Thanks for all of the help!
    At the end of the day, it was a combination of problems. The virtual HDD itself was supposed to be 320MB, and it only took about 200 megs of disk space (I never use "Expanding Volume", or whatever they call it, I always use the 'take all disk space now' option, or whatever it's called).

    ALSO, the CD-ROM driver was bad, I found that out after re-installing PCEM due to it just crashing on startup.

    I have no idea what happened there, I don't think just trying to install a bad CD driver could do that.
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