Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
• If scandisk or
norton
doesn't find errors, re-partition and reformat drive.
• If you encounter errors while formatting the drive, replace drive.
From: ICAN WORKS
these tricks have worked for me several times when cmos lost the c drive or could not read it
invalid drive specification
(1) power off.
(2) disconnect c drive.
(3) power on, disable or remove all fixed hard drives in cmos run auto detect, (none detected)
good!
(4) shut down, reconnect hard drive, reboot. if c drive test on boot menu does not appear
enter setup, run auto detect, this trick usually works on the 386 & 486 models. utilities on
floppy this trick was an accident after a long day, but it worked (note this method was only
ever used and tested on 486s) in frustration of trying to find that darn hard drive, i dug out a
brand new data cable, installed the cable and rebooted. c drive errors all over the boot screen,
when i investigated my handiwork i had discovered my error as i had reversed data cable at
the ide slot. i quickly corrected the mistake and rebooted thinking “now i really did it????” the
system rebooted fine, ran scandisk, all systems okay. os booted up great. just an hour or so
ago, a tech guru told me of his simple method. i have not tested this one yet. he says remove
data cable from hard drive, run fine screwdriver over contacts of hard drive to short out or, as
he says, discharge the component, reconnect, reboot, and it should work. well if it doesn't, it
was going into the garbage anyway.
From: Doug Carpenter
1. Check the CMOS battery, your problem may be simple. It could also be an intermittent short
on the system board or a failing battery. It holds the system info until you shut down, maybe
for as long as five minutes, then fails. What's the clock say?
2. Make sure a disk manager isn't installed on the drive. If that's at least a possibility (greater
than 2.1GB on old 486 computer?), try using the usual drive parameters for a disk manager:
1024, 16, 63 3. Maybe the master boot record was lost. Try fdisk/mbr. Make sure you're using
the correct operating system version.
4. Boot from a clean floppy and try to change to C: If you can see the drive, you may have a
virus.
5. Can you hear the drive spinning up? Can you see a hard drive access LED visibly working?
Maybe it's spinning up slowly, press pause or reset to allow time for the hard drive to get up to
speed, see if the problem disappears.
6. Check for a bad cable connection or power connection. They should be seated firmly. Are
they oriented correctly? Maybe someone else worked on the machine. Is the ribbon cable made
for cable select? Is it set that way? Check the jumpers.
7. If all else fails, put another drive in and see if it works okay.
8. If you get it running, check for viruses just for fun.
