 Corrected FDISK and FORMAT |
MSFN Forums > Microsoft Software Products - Discussion & Support > Windows 95/98/98SE/ME > Windows 9x Member Projects  |
 Oct 29 2006, 06:56 PM
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#1
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MSFN Expert  Group: Members Posts: 1000 Joined: 15-April 05 Member No.: 52191 
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I have tried to correct wrong display in Windows 98 SE FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM.
FDISK.EXE from Q263044 can handle even disks above 137 GB but the display is everywhere limited to 5 digits, on some places the last digit is truncated but most often it appears in the next field and shifts all subsequent values to the right, the result is almost unreadable. The same problem is with FDISK.EXE from Windows Me. I have increased the display to 6 digits and I hope it works everywhere, please test it. There was too many modifications so I could make a mistake. For sizes >=100GB there is no space between the word before this number and this number, it would be necessary to shorten the text on some place and I think this is acceptable behavior. FORMAT.COM from Windows 98 SE has limited the size of in the "Formatting.." message to 5 characters before the decimal dot, but including the thousand comma. The result is that the size for disks above 10 GB was shown incorrectly, in very confusing way: If the size was 12,345.67 MB, then the display was 12,34.67 MB - very bad. It was easy to correct this behavior by extending the size to 6 characters, this correction is already made in Windows Me FORMAT.COM. Unfortunately there is another limit - the size in megabytes is 16-bit integer and therefore the biggest displayable size is 65,535.99 MB. 80 GB disk appears as 10758 MB disk (76293 - 65536). It would be possible to rewrite the display routine but I'm nit sure if it is worth the effort. Here are the corrected files, please test: 
disktools.zip ( 52.82K )
Number of downloads: 469Petr |
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Nov 1 2006, 07:09 PM
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#2
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creator of 98SE2ME  Group: Moderator Posts: 2406 Joined: 22-November 04 Member No.: 37121 
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Posted here:
* Unofficial Windows 98 SE Display Errors FORMAT.COM + FDISK.EXE Fix: http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=85573 Direct download [110 KB, English]: http://www.mdgx.com/files/FDSKFRMT.EXE This NEWer FDISK.EXE Fix replaces OLDer Q263044 FDISK.EXE Fix: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=263044 Keep up the good work, Petr. |
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Nov 1 2006, 11:47 PM
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#3
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MSFN Junkie Group: Banned Posts: 3482 Joined: 4-December 05 Member No.: 81511 OS: none
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Any thoughts on Free FDISK?
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Nov 2 2006, 02:57 PM
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#4
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Member Group: Members Posts: 162 Joined: 24-June 06 From: czech republic Member No.: 99711 OS: 98SE
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QUOTE (Petr @ Oct 29 2006, 06:56 PM)  I have tried to correct wrong display in Windows 98 SE FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM. FDISK.EXE from Q263044 can handle even disks above 137 GB but the display is everywhere limited to 5 digits, on some places the last digit is truncated but most often it appears in the next field and shifts all subsequent values to the right, the result is almost unreadable. The same problem is with FDISK.EXE from Windows Me. I have increased the display to 6 digits and I hope it works everywhere, please test it. There was too many modifications so I could make a mistake. For sizes >=100GB there is no space between the word before this number and this number, it would be necessary to shorten the text on some place and I think this is acceptable behavior. FORMAT.COM from Windows 98 SE has limited the size of in the "Formatting.." message to 5 characters before the decimal dot, but including the thousand comma. The result is that the size for disks above 10 GB was shown incorrectly, in very confusing way: If the size was 12,345.67 MB, then the display was 12,34.67 MB - very bad. It was easy to correct this behavior by extending the size to 6 characters, this correction is already made in Windows Me FORMAT.COM. Unfortunately there is another limit - the size in megabytes is 16-bit integer and therefore the biggest displayable size is 65,535.99 MB. 80 GB disk appears as 10758 MB disk (76293 - 65536). It would be possible to rewrite the display routine but I'm nit sure if it is worth the effort. Here are the corrected files, please test:
disktools.zip ( 52.82K )
Number of downloads: 469Petr Good work - thx, Petr 
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 Nov 3 2006, 02:34 AM
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#5
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Member Group: Members Posts: 236 Joined: 9-May 05 Member No.: 55261 OS: none
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Uhm... don't waste your "powers" for proprietary tools (that is ILLEGAL, too):
Free FDISK - The official FDISK of FreeDOS 
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Nov 3 2006, 02:42 AM
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#6
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MSFN Junkie Group: Banned Posts: 3482 Joined: 4-December 05 Member No.: 81511 OS: none
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QUOTE (patchworks @ Nov 3 2006, 03:34 AM) Uhm... don't waste your "powers" for proprietary tools (that is ILLEGAL, too): ...and a lot of the stuff in this forum here violates the EULA, but M$ doesn't seem to care...Free FDISK - The official FDISK of FreeDOS However in this case I do recommend Free FDISK since it has some better features. |
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Nov 3 2006, 03:55 AM
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#7
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MSFN Expert Group: Members Posts: 1148 Joined: 28-June 04 From: Eerbeek Member No.: 23554 OS: XP Home 
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There's nothing illegal to it. It depends on where you live
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Nov 3 2006, 04:56 AM
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#8
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MSFN Expert Group: Members Posts: 1000 Joined: 15-April 05 Member No.: 52191
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QUOTE (patchworks @ Nov 3 2006, 09:34 AM) Uhm... don't waste your "powers" for proprietary tools (that is ILLEGAL, too): Free FDISK - The official FDISK of FreeDOS At this link is clearly written: QUOTE Supports hard disks up to 128GB in size. I'd not believe in this tool for bigger disks and in general - are you sure that it is 100% compatible with MS-DOS 7.1 and 8.0 and Windows 95/SE/Me?. And do you know it's license? Is it illegal to redistribute it too, I've written to the author and not received the permission to add it to the SESP. As Mr. Loew explained here approx. year ago, according to DMCA it is legal to patch the software to correct its bugs. Yes, to be fully compliant with all licenses, it would be better to distribute just patches, not full programs, but since I have seen that even Microsoft recommends http://www.bootdisk.com/ that contains MS fdisk and format utilities I see no reason for it. Petr |
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Nov 3 2006, 07:29 AM
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#9
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Friend of MSFN Group: Members Posts: 814 Joined: 21-October 06 Member No.: 113643 
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Does the free FDISK allow for repartitioning without data loss?
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Nov 3 2006, 09:05 AM
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#10
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MSFN Junkie  Group: Software Developers Posts: 3624 Joined: 23-July 04 From: Italy Member No.: 25215 OS: none 
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QUOTE (BenoitRen) Does the free FDISK allow for repartitioning without data loss? No, it does not, it is a (enhanced) version of FDISK, with a GNU license. @Petr VERY good work , downloading file and bookmarking this and Mdgx link, thanks!I don't understand however the problem about the QUOTE And do you know it's license? Is it illegal to redistribute it too, I've written to the author and not received the permission to add it to the SESP. it is covered by "standard" GNU GPL, of which this should be the interesting part:QUOTE 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. b ) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.) These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License. 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b ) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code. There is no need to "ask for permission" to anybody, but you MUST cite original author, give the source code of your modifications and keep the "Open source" license. jaclaz This post has been edited by jaclaz: Nov 3 2006, 09:07 AM |
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Nov 3 2006, 09:34 AM
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#11
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MSFN Addict Group: Members Posts: 1983 Joined: 24-November 04 Member No.: 37246 
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QUOTE (LLXX @ Nov 3 2006, 03:42 AM) QUOTE (patchworks @ Nov 3 2006, 03:34 AM) Uhm... don't waste your "powers" for proprietary tools (that is ILLEGAL, too): Free FDISK - The official FDISK of FreeDOS However in this case I do recommend Free FDISK since it has some better features. eh, sure some of the "stuff" here may break MS's EULA, but they no longer apply when Win98/ME are no longer supported by M$. nice work, Petr. will include updated Fdisk.exe & Format.com tools in next release of 98fe SP. |
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Nov 3 2006, 10:03 AM
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#12
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MSFN Addict Group: Members Posts: 1983 Joined: 24-November 04 Member No.: 37246
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QUOTE (Petr @ Nov 3 2006, 05:56 AM) QUOTE (patchworks @ Nov 3 2006, 09:34 AM) Uhm... don't waste your "powers" for proprietary tools (that is ILLEGAL, too): Free FDISK - The official FDISK of FreeDOS At this link is clearly written: QUOTE Supports hard disks up to 128GB in size. I'd not believe in this tool for bigger disks and in general - are you sure that it is 100% compatible with MS-DOS 7.1 and 8.0 and Windows 95/SE/Me?. And do you know it's license? Is it illegal to redistribute it too, I've written to the author and not received the permission to add it to the SESP.As Mr. Loew explained here approx. year ago, according to DMCA it is legal to patch the software to correct its bugs. Yes, to be fully compliant with all licenses, it would be better to distribute just patches, not full programs, but since I have seen that even Microsoft recommends http://www.bootdisk.com/ that contains MS fdisk and format utilities I see no reason for it. Petr great points, Petr. Mr. "patchworks" here doesnt get it. Free FDISK is OUTDATED and cant support HDs beyond 128Gb, hence 48bit LBA support is barely non-existent (or at least buggy) in Free FDISK. And documentation on Free FDISK is kinda lame and does not mention full 48bit LBA support on large HDs. |
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Nov 3 2006, 05:11 PM
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#13
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MSFN Junkie Group: Banned Posts: 3482 Joined: 4-December 05 Member No.: 81511 OS: none
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QUOTE (Petr @ Nov 3 2006, 05:56 AM) QUOTE (patchworks @ Nov 3 2006, 09:34 AM) Uhm... don't waste your "powers" for proprietary tools (that is ILLEGAL, too): Free FDISK - The official FDISK of FreeDOS At this link is clearly written: QUOTE Supports hard disks up to 128GB in size. I'd not believe in this tool for bigger disks and in general - are you sure that it is 100% compatible with MS-DOS 7.1 and 8.0 and Windows 95/SE/Me?. And do you know it's license? Is it illegal to redistribute it too, I've written to the author and not received the permission to add it to the SESP.The reason why the author has not replied about this is because it clearly states in the GNU GPL that you can redistribute it... QUOTE Yes, to be fully compliant with all licenses, it would be better to distribute just patches, not full programs, but since I have seen that even Microsoft recommends http://www.bootdisk.com/ that contains MS fdisk and format utilities I see no reason for it. Maybe you should submit your fixed versions to bootdisk.com...
This post has been edited by LLXX: Nov 3 2006, 05:12 PM |
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Nov 4 2006, 06:11 AM
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#14
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MSFN Expert Group: Members Posts: 1000 Joined: 15-April 05 Member No.: 52191
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I believe that the free FDISK may work.
I use Ranish Partition Manager if I need to partition something non-standard. Several years ago when I configured my PC with many different OSes I've noticed that although partitiong seems to be very easy, different utilities write slightly different data to the partition table and partitioning made by one program was considered as invaild by other. I had tested Win98 FDISK, Windows XP partitioning, Linux fdisk, some fdisk delivered with Ghost and maybe some other. The funniest story was that if I used Win98 fdisk, WinXP had no problem in extended partition, but if I used Windows XP partitioning, the system did not boot. I discovered that the difference was the data written to the offset from the start of the disk field - Windows XP partitioning wrote offset from the start of the extended partition instead. (if I remember correctly). There are also differences in the chain of partition tables used for logical disk drives in extended partition. Also some partitioning programs starts all partitions at head 0, sector 1, while others can start (and end) the partition anywhere. And the biggest problem for me was to determine the right number for each partition (I had about 20 partitions) - different numbering was used by Windows XP in boot.ini (default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(7)\WINDOWS), Windows XP disk manager shows no numbers and even the ordering is different, Ghost shows different numbers, linux shows different partition numbers (hda1, hda2, ... hda16), terrible experience if you have to configure boot.ini or lilo.conf after moving the OS to different partition or just to determine in Ghost what is the right source and destination partition. Does anybody know - is there anywhere some good description of this? Edit: There is also other difference, different FDISKs use different partition type for different tasks. Petr This post has been edited by Petr: Nov 4 2006, 07:03 AM |
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