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I have OS/2 1.3 Extended installed on a 286 and after installing a NIC driver for LAN Manager, a trap is generated during startup when the NIC driver is loaded and it halts. I suspect the driver is not for 1.x, so I want to remove it. I'm not sure if it's in config.sys or another file like protocol.ini, but I can't get far enough to look.

I've booted from the OS/2 install disk and pressed Esc to get to a command prompt, but no drive letter is the OS/2 partition. I have a RAM disk created by the install disk, and the MS-DOS partition I have, but it's not picking up the HPFS OS/2 partition, despite being able to boot from it until it crashes. I thought I could find a DOS driver that lets me R/W HPFS partitions, but the only one I've found requires a 386 and, most importantly, is made to install from within OS/2.

I think I've solved one problem, and that is an editor that I can use in text mode should I be able to access the OS/2 partition. I put a text mode editor I found, aedit.exe, on the install disk. But I can't access the partition.

Is there a key that can be pressed during OS/2 start much like F5 and F8 in MS-DOS? And, how does one use OS/2 fdisk? I thought it might be helpful to view the partitions as a way to determine why I can't see the HPFS partition, but running fdisk with no parameters responds with "SYS1572: You used an invalid FDISK parameter." I have looked everywhere, including the command reference in a PCem OS/2 install, and trying fdisk /help and /?, but there is no documentation on how to use this.

eesz34
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  • If you have the hardware, what also works is to take out the disk from the 286 and access it from a different computer. Makes rescue operations on OS that won't boot a lot simpler. – dirkt Jun 16 '23 at 16:47
  • Can't boot Linux on a 286. DOS fdisk does see the HPFS partition, FWIW. And yeah I can always take the drive out and put it into another system. Kind of annoying if I have to do that each time I mess something up. – eesz34 Jun 16 '23 at 18:31
  • fdisk still does this even on a fully functioning installation in PCem. I used the same install disks, emulating a 286, using the same BIOS image, and booting from the install disk and running fdisk alone generates the same error, despite being able to switch to C: and see the HPFS partition. So OS/2 fdisk is just ornery I guess. – eesz34 Jun 16 '23 at 18:51
  • I did find the Alt-F1 key combination, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to do anything on v1.3. It also doesn't display a blue and white logo during startup. So there are ways to deal with this, but maybe a reinstall isn't so bad either especially since I have a Gotek on the computer and installing an OS from floppies is somewhat therapeutic ;) – eesz34 Jun 16 '23 at 19:01
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    Consider setting up a second OS/2 installation (1.3 or newer version) on a secondary hard drive, if one is available and the hardware supports connecting it... and doing these maintenance tasks from there with the first installation mounted... – rackandboneman Jun 17 '23 at 22:46

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