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SpinRite 6.1, PR-053 hangs on Confirming Reported BIOS Drives

#1

A

awdolan

SpinRite 6.1 keeps hanging on drive 81 on the first step of "Confirming Reported BIOS Drives". I've tried removing all the other hard drives, 2 different USB drives, and several USB ports. So I think it is hanging on the USB drive, is it possible to install SpinRite on a hard drive (I have an empty spare)? When I try I'm told I can only install to removable media.


#2

ColbyBouma

ColbyBouma

The boot drive would be drive 80. Does your computer have an SD/memory card reader? If it does, try unplugging it (if you can).

Also, what is the model number of your computer?


#3

Steve

Steve

When a machine is booted from USB, the BIOS almost always assigns that boot drive the designation of "80". Then the system's normal resident drive will be 81.

I added that first screen to SpinRite specifically because we were encountering instances during SpinRite's startup, when it needed to scan the drives from the BIOS perspective, when SpinRite would appear to hang. But investigation showed that the hang up was occurring in the machine's BIOS... and there was nothing SpinRite could do about that. So that initial screen you're seeing is sort of a "defensive measure" for SpinRite so that IT doesn't get blamed for something that's outside of its control.

So the question is, what's the background of this machine? Are you attempting to run SpinRite on a machine that has known problems?

You CAN definitely install FreeDOS and SpinRite in a hard drive, though we don't currently have any detailed instructions in place for doing so.


#4

A

awdolan

ColbyBouma said:
The boot drive would be drive 80. Does your computer have an SD/memory card reader? If it does, try unplugging it (if you can).

Also, what is the model number of your computer?
Click to expand...
It's a built desktop, motherboard is MSI B450 Plus Gaming Max MS-7B86


#5

A

awdolan

Steve said:
When a machine is booted from USB, the BIOS almost always assigns that boot drive the designation of "80". Then the system's normal resident drive will be 81.

I added that first screen to SpinRite specifically because we were encountering instances during SpinRite's startup, when it needed to scan the drives from the BIOS perspective, when SpinRite would appear to hang. But investigation showed that the hang up was occurring in the machine's BIOS... and there was nothing SpinRite could do about that. So that initial screen you're seeing is sort of a "defensive measure" for SpinRite so that IT doesn't get blamed for something that's outside of its control.

So the question is, what's the background of this machine? Are you attempting to run SpinRite on a machine that has known problems?

You CAN definitely install FreeDOS and SpinRite in a hard drive, though we don't currently have any detailed instructions in place for doing so.
Click to expand...
The machine doesn't have any known issues, works fine, recently upgraded to Win 11. I'll try it with all the other drives disconnected, and check for a BIOS update.
Steve said:
When a machine is booted from USB, the BIOS almost always assigns that boot drive the designation of "80". Then the system's normal resident drive will be 81.

I added that first screen to SpinRite specifically because we were encountering instances during SpinRite's startup, when it needed to scan the drives from the BIOS perspective, when SpinRite would appear to hang. But investigation showed that the hang up was occurring in the machine's BIOS... and there was nothing SpinRite could do about that. So that initial screen you're seeing is sort of a "defensive measure" for SpinRite so that IT doesn't get blamed for something that's outside of its control.

So the question is, what's the background of this machine? Are you attempting to run SpinRite on a machine that has known problems?

You CAN definitely install FreeDOS and SpinRite in a hard drive, though we don't currently have any detailed instructions in place for doing so.
Click to expand...
I upgraded to the latest BIOS, same problem. Is the only solution is a different motherboard? Do you keep a list of known good/bad? Or is there some possible motherboard setting not configured correctly?


#6

Steve

Steve

@awdolan:

To determine what that drive "81" is, grab the "BiosTests" zip from GRC: https://www.grc.com/dev/SpinRite/BiosTests.zip. Inside the ZIP archive you'll find "BT.COM" which is short for "BIOSTEST". It was written back when we were working to get to the bottom of the BIOS bugs that were causing SpinRite to crash when accessing USB drives larger than 137GB. But one of the things is does is dump a quick listing of the drives and their sizes that the BIOS "sees".

So... Could you grab that, run "BT" and share what it outputs? You can use the DOS console redirect "BT >BT.TXT" which will send BT's output to a text file (BT.TXT) so that you can then paste it here. Lets see what drive is causing this trouble!


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