I got one of the fry's Linspire PC's

[Raymond Day]

It comes with Linspire on it. I backed up the hard drive 1st with Ture Image backup. The TIB says it's 38.29GB the backup file is only 452MB.

To do any upgrade of the Linspire on it will cost $50 a year. Why not just get Windows for $100 and be done with it and get free updates. So that seems bad to me to pay for something like that when I have other Fedora running and it don't cost any thing.

So I wanted to install Fedora core 4. I put a DVD on the PC and told it to "Remove all partitions on this system". After a giving it all the setup info. and about when it got to formating some error. I guess it was at the formatting part. I thought because the hard drive my be locked and not showing the right size. I used "QUNLOCK" on the hard drive. Now the BIOS and evey thing just see it as a 8MB hard drive! It's a 40GB hard drive model Maxtor 2F040L0.

The QUNLOCK. People use it on TiVo drives to unlock them.

I ran the QUNLOCK 2 more times but it don't change it. It's still just 8MB.

Any thing I do I can't get it to see the 40GB on it. I ran MaxBlast on it and other things to test the drive. All see it as a 8MB.

Does any one know how I could get the hard drive to see it's full 40GB not just 8MB?

I can only guess they did something to the hard drive so you can't load Windows on it because thinking people will just get it for cheep to load windows on it. But this makes it so you can't load Linux on it ether!

If any one wants to know this PC cost me $150 + about $12 shipping. It seems pretty good so fare.

-Raymond Day

[The Warlock]

No, you broke it by using a tool that was supposed to be used on a TiVO on a PC.

My advice: If you have a fry's near you, take it back and tell them that it was broken when you got it.

If you can't do that, there's probably some kind of arcane low-level formatting technique that would work, but I don't know what it is.

[jtang613]

LOL. Try running fdisk from the Fedora install disk. Or use the "Manual Partition" method to clear things up. When the installer boots into the GUI, CTRL-ALT-F1 to a shell. Then run 'fdisk /dev/hda' (or whatever device your hard disk is on).

It is *highly* unlikely there is any "lock" on the drive. And whatever qunlock is, it's not the right program for the job. Learn how to use the Linux fdisk command-line program. You will never have this type of problem.

hth,
Jason

[huw-l]

It seems more likely that you got some odd error in anaconda (possibly because of a bad dvd?). Seeing the error would have been helpful.

A drive misreporting it's size is one of the known side-effects of a QUNLOCK process gone wrong. I suggest you scour the QUNLOCK documentation to find out how to fix the damage.

Does linspire still boot or os the machine now totally dead?

If not run the following commands so we have a better idea about your system.

fdisk -l

hdparm -i /dev/hd[whatever letter your hard drive is]

any info you have on what motherboard/chipset the machine is running would also be useful.

[Raymond Day]

I have a 80GB laptop drive that I put in this system. Because the power supply is only a 250 watt one and the hard drive they have in there takes less power.

I installed Fedora core 4 on the 80GB drive. It all installed real good.

I put the 40GB that came with it that just sees it as a 8MB hard drive. I don't know how to use the fdisk. But I did the last commands the last post said. Here is what I got back.

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 9729 78043770 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdb: 10 MB, 10240000 bytes
4 heads, 63 sectors/track, 79 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 252 * 512 = 129024 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 79 9922+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
[root@localhost ~]# hdparm -i /dev/hdb

/dev/hdb:

Model=Maxtor 2F040L0, FwRev=VAM51MJ0, SerialNo=F1KLWQCE
Config={ Fixed }
RawCHS=19/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=57
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=19/16/63, CurSects=19152, LBA=yes, LBAsects=20000
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
AdvancedPM=yes: disabled (255) WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: (null):

* signifies the current active mode

[root@localhost ~]#

See the "LBAsects=20000" ? I think this is what's wrong. A PDF file of the hard drive says that should be "80293248" for this hard drive.

The system info. The only way I know to get that is install phpsysinfo and go to it's web page. Let me see if I can do that.

I got phpsysinfo installed.

I don't know how good it will paste in here lets see:

System Information: localhost.localdomain (192.168.0.14)
System Vital
Canonical Hostname localhost.localdomain
Listening IP 192.168.0.14
Kernel Version 2.6.12-1.1398_FC4
Distro Name Fedora Core release 4 (Stentz)
Uptime 41 minutes
Current Users 3
Load Averages 0.16 0.20 0.12



Network Usage
Device Received Sent Err/Drop
lo 2.11 MB 2.11 MB 0/0
eth0 4.50 MB 894.74 KB 0/0
sit0 0.00 KB 0.00 KB 0/0


Hardware Information
Processors 1
Model AMD Sempron(tm) 2200+
Chip MHz 1496.45 MHz
Cache Size 256 KB
System Bogomips 2973.69
PCI Devices 00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter

IDE Devices hda: IC25N080ATMR04-0 (Capacity: 74.53 GB)
hdb: Maxtor 2F040L0 (Capacity: 9.77 MB)
hdc: CD-ROM F565E

USB Devices Linux 2.6.12-1.1398_FC4 ohci_hcd OHCI Host Controller 0000:00:03.2
Linux 2.6.12-1.1398_FC4 ohci_hcd OHCI Host Controller 0000:00:03.1
Linux 2.6.12-1.1398_FC4 ohci_hcd OHCI Host Controller 0000:00:03.0
Linux 2.6.12-1.1398_FC4 ehci_hcd EHCI Host Controller 0000:00:03.3




Memory Usage
Type Percent Capacity Free Used Size
Physical Memory 96% 8.27 MB 225.70 MB 233.97 MB
Disk Swap 0% 479.11 MB 900.00 KB 479.99 MB



Mounted Filesystems
Mount Type Partition Percent Capacity Free Used Size
/ ext3 /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 3% 65.83 GB 2.07 GB 71.59 GB
/boot ext3 /dev/hda1 14% 79.91 MB 13.71 MB 98.72 MB
/dev/shm tmpfs /dev/shm 0% 116.98 MB 0.00 KB 116.98 MB
Totals : 3% 66.02 GB 2.08 GB 71.80 GB

It took a little time to install it. I downloaded it at sourceforge.net (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/phpsysinfo/phpsysinfo-2.3.tar.gz?download) to my Fedora server that I have samba running on. I not good at running a tar.gz so I open it in windows "WinRAR" and it made a folder "phpsyinfo-dev" I renamed it to "phpsysinfo" and copyed the "config.php.new" to a new file called "config.php" In the X windows of Fedora I drag and drop the folder to /home/tmp and in the command line I typed "yum install mc.i386" and did the command "cd /var/www/html/" then "mc" to start Midnight Commander. Over on the right side of it I went to /home/tmp and clicked on the folder and then "5copy" It did it. I then quit mc and typed "/usr/sbin/httpd" and typed it's "http://192.168.0.14/phpsysinfo/" That's how I got the system info. I guess this will help others if they want to install phpsysinfo. Midnight Commander is very good too.

O in the info. I put 128MB more ram in it then what it came with. If I get the Maxer drive to see it's full size I will DD copy the 80GB to the 40GB Maxer that came with it. I hope it can be fixed. I know the DD would error because of the size but that part I will not have filled with any data.

I mail order it. I don't want to send it back to fry's because I messed it up. It my cost less to buy I new drive then pay to fix this one. After all it all came in a $150 system. I think this system was $99 not to long ago. A day after I order it the price went up to $180!

I for got to say that the Linspire did not boot after that. It came up filling the screen with AA AA AA something like that. But I use program to format it so it don't even come up like that any more. It just wants a boot device.

There looks like there is not much info. on QUNLOCK. Goodle just shows lots of links about TiVo with it.

I did unlock a ZapStation hard drive. It worked good on that.

Thank you for the replys people!

-Raymond Day

[huw-l]

Disk /dev/hdb: 10 MB, 10240000 bytes
4 heads, 63 sectors/track, 79 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 252 * 512 = 129024 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 79 9922+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

OK the good news is that with some judicious use of fdisk you should be able to get this disk back to a working state.

do fdisk /dev/hdb
then hit x to get the extended menu. hit m to get the meny options. You should see options for changing the number of cylinders and the number of heads. Change heads to 255 and cylinders to something like 3500. Write the partition table and then re-run fdisk -l to see how big fdisk reckons the disk is. You should be able to get it back to something like 40GB. You might also want to use the o option in fdisk to write a band new partition table to /dev/sdb.

This should get the disk back to a state where you can install fedora on it.

[Raymond Day]

That looked very good. But it don't look like it worked. Here is my command line of doing this:

[root@localhost html]# fdisk /dev/hdb

Command (m for help): x

Expert command (m for help): m
Command action
b move beginning of data in a partition
c change number of cylinders
d print the raw data in the partition table
e list extended partitions
f fix partition order
g create an IRIX (SGI) partition table
h change number of heads
m print this menu
p print the partition table
q quit without saving changes
r return to main menu
s change number of sectors/track
v verify the partition table
w write table to disk and exit

Expert command (m for help): h
Number of heads (1-256, default 4): 255

Expert command (m for help): c
Number of cylinders (1-1048576, default 79): 3500

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 3500.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Expert command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
[root@localhost html]# fdisk /dev/hdb -o
fdisk: invalid option -- o

Usage: fdisk [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK Change partition table
fdisk -l [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK List partition table(s)
fdisk -s PARTITION Give partition size(s) in blocks
fdisk -v Give fdisk version
Here DISK is something like /dev/hdb or /dev/sda
and PARTITION is something like /dev/hda7
-u: give Start and End in sector (instead of cylinder) units
-b 2048: (for certain MO disks) use 2048-byte sectors
[root@localhost html]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 9729 78043770 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/hdb: 10 MB, 10240000 bytes
4 heads, 63 sectors/track, 79 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 252 * 512 = 129024 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 79 9922+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
[root@localhost html]#

Am I doing any thing wrong?

-Raymond Day

[Raymond Day]

I got it all most. I just can't change the cylinders! Here is what it looks like now:

Disk /dev/hdb: 10 MB, 10240000 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

In the PDF of the hard drive it says cylinder is 79,656, heads 16, and sectors 63. So the last two are right.

For I test I put the cylinders to 18. It still has it as 19. I must be doing something wrong.

[Raymond Day]

I have been looking a long time on the web. At this TiVo web page (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/archive/index.php/t-192275.html) a post says The drive will now report 9MB to the BIOS and this is a permanent change, it cannot be reversed by any currently known process.

But reading on a post says this:

qunlock and DiskUtil manipulate the drive firmware (its controller). Although the data that they alter is stored on the drive, it's in an area that's not normally available to the host PC.

If I can find a firmware update for this hard drive that my fix it. Any one know were a firmware update is? I looked on Maxtor's web page but can't find any firmware for this Maxtor 2F040L0 hard drive.

I ran Diskutil on it to unlock it but it said it was not locked. So I used it to lock it. Then unlock it. But it's still not the right size.

-Raymond Day

[jim]

seems like a big waste of time...

Download Dariks Boot N Nuke
http://dban.sourceforge.net/
Wipe the drive and install from there

[Raymond Day]

I downloaded the Wipe the drive to a floppy. Ran it. There was not room on the floppy to save the log file. But it said it wipe the dirve and did it in only about 2 sec! I power it off but the BIOS still see it as 9MB hard drive.

I think the only thing that will fix it is updating the firmware.

I know that TiVo and the ZapStation both run under Linux and they both lock the hard drive. So that they only see it as a small hard drive but the Linux knows it's not that small.

I guess there is a way to tell Linux what size the hard drive is with out reading it from the hard drive.

I have a 320GB hard drive on my Fedora core 4 server I have and the BIOS only see it as a 132GB but Fedora see it as a 298GB drive after formating it.

-Raymond Day

[imdeemvp]

You can use powermax for www.maxtor.com and DO a quick low-level format and done.

[Raymond Day]

I all ready used PowerMax 4.21 and MaxBLAST 4 on it and did the low-level format the fast and slow format. It still sees it as a small hard drive! It formats it very fast so they just see it as a small hard drive.

It looks like there is not firmware that a user can do on it.

-Raymond Day

[imdeemvp]

Check to see if you need to upgrade the mobo bios....

[Jman]

Moved to Install Help.

[huw-l]

After a bit of searching it looks like you are out of luck. According to the TiVO hackers running QUNLOCK on a maxtor drive destroys the firmware and produces exactly the symptoms you are experiencing.

http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=122008

[The Warlock]

Like I said, take it back and say it was broken when you got it, and don't make the same mistake a second time.

[Raymond Day]

I e-mailed Maxtor and told them just what I did and how the BIOS only sees it as a 9MB drive. I guess it will take 2 days for me to get a e-mail back.

Maybe I can send it for them for a little $ and they will fix it.

I even put the drive in my ZapStation. The display on the ZapStation said turn off power now. I did and in the New PC it still seen it as 9MB. It will lock a segate drive if you don't have the PC BIOS chip in it. I ran the QUNLOCK on it again but it did not fix it. Still 9MB.

It looks like I can get that drive on line with shipping cost about $45 for the Maxtor 2F040L0. This is one place. $44 (http://www.pricegrabber.com/user_sales_getprod.php?masterid=615456&lot_id=1875998) So if it cost more then that to fix it. I will just store the drive away with a postit note on it saying to wait for a QUNLOCK that flips the lock. It looks like it's programed in C and I don't know any thing about that.

I guess could change just one byte in the code for a easy fix. But it's been out for a long time and it don't look like it.

Thank you for all the help people! I learned a good lessin here and I hope it helps others to know not to run this on a drive that you are not sure of. I wish I would of looked at the first error Fedora said. If any one else gets this Linspire loaded PC and loads Fedora Core 4 see if you get the error when it goes to format and please tell here what is was.

It does show in the user's manual how to install windows on it. To bad I did not read that. Before I got this I was looking on google for info. on it. I seen some people talk about how they could not load any other OS on it. That and the error made me think the drive was locked. To bad I did not read the user's manual first.

It's working good with the 80GB laptop hard drive. I mounted it in the PC. It looks like it needs more ram then the 256 in it now. It only came with 128! Because the windows can some times go very slow. I guess it's using swop ram on the hard drive.

-Raymond Day