Korean Job Discussion Forums

[the saint]

Hi everyone... while back here in the UK on holiday someone has asked me to look at why their machine refuses to boot up. I can't figure it out so thought of you all sweltering in Korea. Thought you'd like something to distract you from the summer heat...

Win 98 machine. 150Mhz pentium processor with 32Mb RAM.
Apparently the user got someone to replace a floppy drive which was faulty. On reboot (including normal system beep) after this it gets as far as "Verifying DMI Pool Data" before coming up with the error message
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER
I have checked the BIOS and have set that to only boot from C to no avail. I also noticed that CMOS settings had been reset as if the clock had died. Obviously it cannot find any system files on C.
One other thing which may or may not be relevant... it checks the RAM twice, sometimes three times before continuing to boot.

So, any suggestions would be good. I have another working computer alongside also running Win98. Can I make a boot disk from there? Can I access C drive without booting windows by getting a command prompt? If so, how? I'd at least like to be able to retrieve info off C via the floppy if possible.

Any info much appreciated...

[Demophobe]

You can download a Win98 boot disk from here:

http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml

Or make one from the working system. It's been a long time since I have worked in Win98...I think it's in the control panel, system, then one of the tabs has an option to creat a boot disk....not sure where though.

Get to a command prompt A:/ and do an fdisk to see what's going on with the partitions on C:

But....

First, make sure that all the power connectors and IDE cables are all hooked up inside the computer and that they are all the right way around. Re-seat the RAM....in fact, check all components inside the case for any seating problems. If the case was dusty inside, look for anything that might lead you to believe that parts were damaged, removed, etc.... during the floppy replacement. Check for any visible damage on the board that may result from putting a new floppy in or pulling the old one out.

Something happened while the floppy was being changed. Whoever did the work is where the story should start.

Pull out the hard drive from the broken computer and put it in the other as a slave drive...check the jumper pins on the back of the drive to do this. See if the disk shows up as a drive on the working computer. If it does and all the files are present, try rebooting with it set as the master drive on the working machine. This is to rule out the drive being failed.

In the BIOS, is the hard drive correctly displayed? I mean, on the first page where it lists IDE devices, does the hard drive show up and is it shown as the correct size? If yes, then the hard drive may be functional, but the files are corrupt or the partition table is messed up. "fdisk" will tell you this as well but you will need the boot disk and set the boot to "floppy" on the broken system.

Try also swapping the floppy drive on the broken machine using the same swapping procedure as above to check if it's functional.

Perhaps it got shorted out or something. As if there was a power short....resetting the CMOS. A power short could fry the HDD or corrupt the files, especially on an old one.

[jaebea]

Once you've booted up with the bootdisk, the command :

"fdisk /mbr" will reformat the master boot record and you may be able to recover the partition.

Just follow the great instructions from Demophobe.. :D

jae.

[the saint]

Okay, update everyone...

Demo, thanks as always for the help. I took off the case and saw that there are in fact two hard disks connected in series by one cable to the Secondary slot on the board. In the primary slot there was a cable going nowhere. I then removed this and tried various combinations of connecting these hard disks to the board. The result is always the same with the two disks connected i.e. I get to an Invalid System Disk Replace disk and press any key message every time just slower when I only connect one disk.

As the jumpers on the HDDs would not have been touched during a Floppy replacement, I guess they are set as they always have been.

The BIOS is detecting all three disks including the floppy at the correct sizes (as far as my rusty memory of this computer serves me) but when I downloaded and made a boot disk for Win98 and inserted it to boot from I get Disk I/O error messages from the Floppy. Not sure what this means when the BIOS actually detects it in the first place.

Doesn't seem to be any visible damage on the board and the RAM is nice and tight.

I can't get to a command prompt because I only make it as far as press any key messages which is frustrating.

The next step seems to be to put the HDDs into the working machine. However, I am confused as to why there are two disks totally a whopping 5Gb (!) when one would have done (machine built in 1997) and which I have to take out to move over to the new machine. Not sure what to do with the jumpers either when i attempt this move.

How much risk is there of me killing the working machine by doing this and getting something wrong? That would really not make me popular here...

[Demophobe]

No sweat....you really can't hurt the working machine by switching drives, as long as the power and all cables are correct. Red to Red for IDE...power red inside, IDE power (striped) red inside. Floppies are not the same. Check that floppy connection.

Did they have RAID in 1997? I don't think so...not without a SCSI card, and they were way expensive back then, so rule that out.

Why 2 drives? Dunno...

Look at the jumpers to find which one is the master. In the BIOS, are the drives identical? You can find the boot drive in the BIOS, then use the name/numbers from there to determine which drive is the master. This is the drive you should swap out to the good machine.

However, while you are tinkering, try some combinations of drives in the botched machine. Try removing one of the drives, preferrably the slave, (although it won't really matter....you will just get the same message you are seeing now) and see what happens. Try booting with each drive and swap each one out into the good sytem. You did this, but.... use the primary for the master and the secondary for the slave/CDROM.

If it just wont boot with either drive alone of in concert, nor with the jumpers checked and changed if need be, then do the swap. See if they read/write on the good machine. If they do, the problem may well be a circuit thing, which is beyond repair.

Also, check the power/IDE connectors on the floppy. For all of my years on computers, it's still very easy for me to get these cables/wires the wrong way, as they aren't as clearly marked, nor easily rmembered (red to red thing) as regular IDE cables/power cables.

When you put a disk in the floppy, can you hear it slide the disk door open? Look underneath....is it spinning? If yes, then it has power...check the IDE both a the floppy drive and the mainboard.

It really sounds like an IDE cable problem. If the bloke removed the IDE cables for some reason to replace the floppy, then he may have put them back incorrectly. Having 2 HDDs on the secondary IDE and nothing on the first is just wacky. Sort out the master and slave drives, and put them on the correct IDE cables. This is a good start. Re-check floppy IDE and power. Try the master HDD on the primary IDE with no slave.

If you do get the HDDs to boot up in the good machine, see which one has windows on it. This will of course be the master. If then the jumpers, IDE and power all all good in the old box, then it's something depper...perhaps the mainboard has gone south.

Buy an old HDD (not new as that old crate won't recognize anything that is bigger than 3GB or something and FAT16) and transfre the files from the old HDD to the NEW and see what happens. Those old HDDs, if you can find them, are a pittance.

Finally, why are you trying to fix such an old machine? My word....a new, faster replacement could be a celeron 500.....very, very cheap indeed as are all of the parts that go with it.

Whew.....

[the saint]

Demo... thanks again. The FDD has power. I have tried every combo of the two HDDs under the sun and no go. I will check the IDE to the FDD but it has a diff number of pins than the HDDs so it is impossible to muck them up anyway.

I'm not really trying to fix it, simply trying to get access to the HDD to get the files off it now. I will have to try getting it out of the old machine and into the new in a new bay. I have found out which one the BIOS thinks is the one to boot from so will go with that first.

Can I just clarify... if I have the BIOS starting okay but not reading a HDD as a system disk, can I get a command prompt and find out what is on the C drive? Is this impossible for me i.e. has the boot not progressed enough for me to access DOS?

[Demophobe]

Yeah....you can't get a command prompt without it loading something....even DOS.

Have you tried safe mode? This can get you into a command prompt if it will go that far.

Sorry...I am really out of practise with older Win98 stuff and DOS. If you can put the old drive in the new machine (which seems to be the only real option at this point) then you should be able to get the files off of it unless the partition is messed up, then nothing can read it without a rebuild of the file system.

FDISK [/STATUS] /X
/STATUS Displays partition information.
/X Ignores extended disk-access support (will not use LBA support). Use this switch if you receive one of the following symptoms:

Unable to access a drive from DOS versions prior to 7.
Disk access messages .
Stack overflow messages.
High amounts of data corruption.
Extra drive letters

FDISK /MBR Command used to rewrite the Master Boot Record.
FDISK /CMBR <DISK> Recreates the Master Boot Record on specified disk. Performs the same functions as FDISK /MBR except can be used on other disk drives.
FDISK /STATUS Shows you the current status of your hard drives.
FDISK /ACTOK Makes FDISK not check the disk integrity allowing the drives to be created faster.
FDISK /FPRMT Will not get the prompt for FAT32 support, in addition allows FDISK to be forced into using FAT32 on drives smaller then 540MB (by default FDISK will not use FAT32 on any drive smaller then 540MB). Finally this command can only be used with FDISK that supports FAT32.

Also try the scandisk function with the /autofix tag.

scandisk c:/all/checkonly/autofix


This is a copy/paste from :

http://www.computerhope.com/msdos.htm

If you can rebuild the MBR, perhaps you can salvage the info.

[the saint]

Got it!

Shifted a drive over to the other machine as a slave and bingo. The OS was, thankfully, on the other disk leaving the disk I shifted with docs only which is great as that is all we want...

Thanks for your help...