BUG: FDISK Reports Incorrect Disk Capacity for Certain PCMCIA / PCCARD ATA Drives (239119)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Windows 95
  • Microsoft Windows 98
This article was previously published under Q239119

SYMPTOMS

FDISK, when run from an MS-DOS box after Windows has been started, reports the wrong disk size for PCCARD-based ATA drives that contain a storage capacity greater than 1023 cylinders. This issue generally applies to disk drives that do not appear in real mode prior to protected-mode Windows (this problem occurs, for example, with drives where the controller has no BIOS extension, so MS-DOS has no way of knowing that they exist).

CAUSE

A bug in the IDE device driver, Esdi_506.pdr, results in FDISK using INT 13 function 8 to obtain disk geometry information. This function truncates the cylinder count to a 10-bit value.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.
Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:12/20/2004
Keywords:kbBug kbnofix KB239119
©2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.