Thought people would catch up, but by the continued complaints, I see it ain’t so. Took me two months to learn the simple, so guess I should share it. SATA drives will many times not boot, with the error “system drivers not loaded” or similar – “cannot find…”
Your bootable cd-rom must incorporate extcd.sys and not cd.sys or oakcdrom.sys, or the system will not boot. Use a Win98 Start disk, suitably modified. This can be used as a bootable image for cd-rw/dvd-rw. [WinImage—win98 start floppy, read disk, save as w98orig.imz, make read only. Make copy, BOOT.ima (note: .ima), insert extcd.sys, smartdrv.sys, mouse.com. This into DOS, for use with any DOS program. ADD line to autoexec below quit directing to the setup.exe or other start program on disk, in the cd-rom drive (N). Copy failing disk intact to desktop and then make a bootable cd-rom or dvd using the disk image boot.ima, in your cd-writer.
Alternativley, extract boot segment from disk using UltraIso, set to allow change in image according to need, copy the whole disk from desktop into UltraIso, make bootable image using UltraIso, save as .iso file, then use your disk writer to write that image to disk.
All disks so done now boot in SATA systems.
Autoexec.txt
@ECHO OFF
set EXPAND=YES
SET DIRCMD=/O:N
set LglDrv=27 * 26 Z 25 Y 24 X 23 W 22 V 21 U 20 T 19 S 18 R 17 Q 16 P 15
set LglDrv=%LglDrv% O 14 N 13 M 12 L 11 K 10 J 9 I 8 H 7 G 6 F 5 E 4 D 3 C
cls
LH Smartdrv > NUL
call setramd.bat %LglDrv%
set temp=c:\
set tmp=c:\
path=%RAMD%:\;a:\;%CDROM%:\
copy command.com %RAMD%:\ > NUL
set comspec=%RAMD%:\command.com
copy extract.exe %RAMD%:\ > NUL
%RAMD%:\extract /y /e /l %RAMD%: ebd.cab > NUL
echo The diagnostic tools were successfully loaded to drive %RAMD%.
echo.
LH %ramd%:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:extcd001 /L:N
mouse.com
echo.
GOTO QUIT
:QUIT
(optional) N:\
(setup.exe)-etc.
NOTE text and spelling changes !!!! Important, due to SATA config, at least N drive high as cd drive.
Config.txt
[menu]
menuitem=CD, Start computer with CD-ROM support.
menudefault=CD,30
menucolor=7,0
[CD]
device=himem.sys /testmem:off
device=extcd.sys /D:extcd001
device=flashpt.sys
[COMMON]
files=100
buffers=20
dos=high,umb
stacks=9,256
devicehigh=ramdrive.sys /E 32767
lastdrive=z
NOTE text and spelling changes !!!!