Cannot Access Hard Disk After Booting from Floppy Disk

• Microsoft Windows 95
• Microsoft Windows 98
• Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition

SYMPTOMS

After you start your computer from a floppy disk for troubleshooting purposes or to install an operating system, you may receive the following error message after you attempt to change to the hard disk, even though the hard disk is correctly partitioned and formatted:

Invalid Drive Specification

CAUSE

This error message can occur if you have a drive overlay program installed and you do not follow the proper procedures to boot from a floppy disk. When a drive overlay program is loaded, you cannot boot directly from a floppy disk if you want to be able to access the hard disk. You must first load the drive overlay program and then boot from the floppy disk.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, check the documentation included with your drive overlay software, or contact the hard disk manufacturer for information about how to boot from a floppy disk and access the hard disk.

MORE INFORMATION

Drive overlay or geometry translation software may be used when a computer does not support Logical Block Addressing (LBA) for gaining access to hard disks over 528 megabytes (MB) in size. Drive overlay software may also be required when a computer's BIOS does not support INT 13 Extensions to gain access to hard disks larger than 8.0 gigabytes (GB) in size.

For additional information, click the article numbers below to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q186057 How to Tell If Drive Overlay Program Is Installed in Windows

Q122052 Logical Block Addressing (LBA) Defined

Additional query words:

Keywords : kb3rdparty kbenv win31 win95 win98 win98se wfwg
Version : WINDOWS:95
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbprb