Filename: FAT32WP.TXT
WWW URL: http://www.firmware.com/support/bios/fat32wp.htm
FTP URL: ftp://ftp.firmware.com/text/fat32wp.txt
Revision: 02/03/99 TLS Micro Firmware Technical Support
Summary: Fixed Disk Boot Sector Write-Protect option in Phoenix 4.x
BIOSes can not be used with FAT32 partitions.
Most Phoenix 4.x BIOSes, including Micro Firmware BIOS upgrades, include an option on the Security menu called "Fixed Disk Boot Sector", which can be set to "Normal" or "Write-protect". This can be used to protect against boot-sector viruses.
The write-protect option cannot be used with FAT32 partitions in Windows 95/98. If the write-protect option is enabled, a hard drive partitioned with FAT32 will give the following error message when Windows is trying to boot up:
If the boot drive is not a FAT32 partition, but other drives in the system are FAT32 partitions, the system may boot up fine, but there may be problems writing files to FAT32 partitions. This problem may not appear in GUI mode. The above error message will appear when trying to write any files to a FAT32 drive in MS-DOS mode.
Write fault error writing drive C
Abort, Retry, Fail?
Also, if a drive has been partitioned and formatted with FAT32, and then the write-protect option is set in the BIOS, and then the WIN95 or WIN98 setup progam is run to install WIN95/WIN98, the following error message will occur (just after the SCANDISK test):
This one may also occur with FAT16.
ATTENTION: A serious disk error has
occurred while writing to drive C.
Retry (r)?
We have not investigated the cause of this problem, but we assume it is due to intended normal functioning of Windows 95/98. The solution is to set the Fixed Disk Boot Sector option in the system BIOS to Normal.