hard drive problem - CDROM-Guide forums

daz · #1 Apr 27, 2003, 07:06 AM

My m8, who doesnt know a lot about pcs other than windows. brought me his machine.
He says he left his pc on and when jhe went back to it, the message was
INSERT BOOT DISC.
white writing on a black screen.
After a while the message had changed to
NO SIGNAL.
Which I understand seems like maybe a graphics card prob.
He has important files on his hard drive that he doesnt want to lose.

I took out the hard dive and piggy backed it with mine. My pc (winxp) didnt even register the drive - the name of the drive was there when booting up and winxp says it found it but there were no extra drive letters even after a few restarts. I have piggy backed drives before and I'm positive all was correct ie. second drive was slave etc.

He is running win98 and when I use a start up floppy and boot to dos I can change to c drive but the contents are only 2mb - he has a 15gb drive. The only available drives are a: c: and the two cd-roms d: and e:

I tried to start installing win98 but the message was that there is not a valid partition to install to!

The next thing I tried was Norton rescue but he doesnt have a rescue disk made on his pc. I can get as far as norton asking where to find boot information to use but I don't where I can get this (if at all)

Has anyone had a similar hard drive problem? Are the files on it recoverable?

I was going to partition 1gb and install windows there but I simply cannot get into the hard drive to do this.

I dont know if the hard drive is simply broken or maybe a virus - he had no up to date virus protection, and no firewall. The last time he was online was over a wek ago.

The lesson learned here is to use up to date virus protection and a firewall and back up needed files!

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

green_blade · #2 Apr 27, 2003, 09:05 AM

You could try booting with a 98 boot disc and then type sys c: at the command prompt. Hopefully, if it's just the boot files that are damaged, this may cure the problem.

zedy · #3 Apr 27, 2003, 09:45 AM

The hard drive is busted.

daz · #4 Apr 28, 2003, 06:31 AM

I tried sys c: but nothing happened.
I tried if from a: and c:
I even tried format c: to see what happened - was gonna say no at the next part but the message was something like
THERE IS NOT A VALID PARTITION .......BLAH BLAH

green_blade · #5 Apr 28, 2003, 08:49 AM

Quote:

[i]Originally posted by daz [/i]
[B]I tried sys c: but nothing happened.
I tried if from a: and c:
I even tried format c: to see what happened - was gonna say no at the next part but the message was something like
THERE IS NOT A VALID PARTITION .......BLAH BLAH [/B]

Make sure the file sys.com is on your boot disc (you can copy it from another win98 PC if available) and that you run sys c: from the A:> prompt.

maksar2831 · #6 Apr 28, 2003, 11:49 PM

Are there files on the drive you want to save...if not email me at [email]mackpy30@netscape.net[/email] and i will write you a small walk through on how to do it.. if there are files on the harddrive you want to save try using a harddrive (to peggie back too)..that has 98.. or ME...a drive with a FAT 32 O.S...Xp probl..will not work!!!!!!