Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
1. Disconnect disk drive and reconnect again.
2. Make sure the disk connection and the power are connected properly.
3. Check the jumper setting on the disk drive and the disk controller.
4. Access Setup and run 'Auto Detect' to detect the disk drive type.
5. Listen to the disk drive when it is booting.
6. Notice the disk drive LED when it is booting.
7. Boot from floppy disk and run 'FDISK' to display the disk drive capacity.
8. Make sure the disk drive is the primary and set "Active.”
9. If the file system is FAT32, try to display the content of the drive by type in “DIR C:”
10. Try to transfer system to the disk drive by type in ”SYS C:”
11. Move the disk drive other machine, and repeat steps 1-10.
12. Repeat steps 1-10 with other working disk drive to confirm the problem.
From: Walt Lonnborg
First, check to see if a nonboot floppy was left in drive A: The CMOS may be set to read the
floppy drive first and will give an error trying to read a nonboot floppy. Check controller cable
connections and power cable connections. Check to see if the power cable is loose or the flat
ribbon controller cable is loose at the drive or the controller/motherboard connection. Check to
make sure the cable red line side is plugged to pin 1 at the Hard Drive and the
controller/motherboard. Check the jumpers on all drives for master/slave settings. Turn on
the computer. Hit the Del or other key combination to get into the CMOS setup utility. Make
note of the Standard settings for the drives. Verify them with the settings required for the
drive. You may autodetect the drive if there are no settings for it. Older computers require you
set these settings manually. Reboot the machine and check the settings. If the BIOS has lost
these settings you need to replace the motherboard battery. If it autodetects the drive, try a
reboot. If you can read the drive backup everything you can. You can backup files from a DOS
prompt. You don't have to get Windows running to backup essential data. If the reboot doesn't
work: Set the CMOS to boot from an appropriate operating system diskette A: or CD
and reboot. If you can read the drive backup everything you can. Use fdisk /mbr to rebuild the
boot record. Try to reboot. If reboot still doesn't work, reinstall the operating system.
From:Ian Steele
A common problem with incorrect CMOS settings is that the C: drive will not boot. Providing
the CMOS settings are valid (that is that they do not specify a bigger drive then what the drive
is), then the system should be able to see the drive if you are booting from a diskette. If you
can see the drive from a diskette, then you are very close to recovery. Adding another hard
drive and xcopying the data will save the data. You can then set the old drive specs to AUTO in
the CMOS and then run FDISK/Format and restore the drive. It is a good idea to reboot off the
C: drive when you have formatted the drive to verify that the drive is okay—it should be if the
original problem was a loss of CMOS settings.
If the C: drive was a NTFS partition then of course the booting off the diskette will not see the
drive. In this case using a shareware program NTSF4DOS or something like that will allow you
to read the drive and copy it to another drive.
