TITLE:              Gateway 2000 problem after Novell DOS install
DOCUMENT ID:        TID800139
DOCUMENT REVISION:  1
DATE:               28Oct1994
ALERT STATUS:       Yellow
README FOR:         NA

NOVELL PRODUCT and VERSION:
NOVELL DOS 7.0

ABSTRACT:
NA

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SYMPTOMS:

After installing Novell DOS 7 on a Gateway 2000 P590 (Pentium 90mhz),
the hard drive would not boot.  The system would hang after the BIOS
information was displayed, just before the "STARTING DOS..." message
would normally appear.

The system could be booted from a Novell DOS 7 bootable floppy disk
and the hard drive accessed without any noticeable problem.

SOLUTIONS:

The Gateway 2000's AMI BIOS (this customer's was version 1.00.09.AX1)
has a setting called "LBA Transfer Mode".  This setting allows the
drive to be viewed differently than the drive's official settings. 
Somehow, it had been disabled.  After enabling the LBA Transfer Mode,
the drive would boot, and FDISK saw it as a 707 cylinder drive with
696 MB, which matched the drive's existing partition table.  Note
that the CMOS setting still properly reflects the official settings
(1416 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track).

While the customer had been booting from floppy and accessing the
drive successfully, it is suspected that he may have had problems
trying to put more than 504 MB on the drive, had this correction not
been made.

There have been a few other customer reports of failure to boot after
installing Novell DOS 7 on Gateway 2000 Pentium machines (60mhz,
66mhz, 90mhz).  In minimal tests, Gateway 2000 technicians reproduced
the symptom, though not consistently, and not on 90 mhz machines. 
They have not verified whether LBA Transfer Mode is involved in their
tests.  It is also not known if LBA Transfer Mode was involved in any
of the other customer-reported cases, or even whether those machines
contained drives with over 1024 cylinders.

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