1 computer claims 3 hard drives failed

[thebatpeople]

I was given a hard drive(Western Digital 8.4GB) that is full of viruses and spyware. I was going to clear the drive and install it in a computer for my kids. I unplugged the hard drive in my computer(CTX, Pegasus e5tx-at motherboard, 32M RAM, Maxtor 4GB HDD, Win98SE), plugged the 8.4GB in and booted from a Win98 start up disk. It came up complaining of a hard drive failure. I decided it wasn't worth the headache, pulled that drive and plugged in a drive(Western Digital 540.8MB) that worked when I pulled it a few years ago. Got the same error. I thought perhaps it quit working from non-use. Unplugged it and plugged the original drive back in and was sad to see the same error even though the BIOS shows the proper information for the drive. I've tried swapping cables and connections between IDE1 and IDE2. Norton rescue disk[last updated in 2002(slacker)] claimed I had a bad FAT but gave an error of not being able to write to the drive.

Does anyone know what the heck is going on?
Is the virus transferring to other drives via the memory?
How can I recover the data and the use of the Maxtor?
How can I recover the use of the 2 Western Digitals?

Thanks in advance for any help,
Tim

 

[edfair]

BIOS have drive detection available? Would try with the 540 since it probably is clear of virus and won't matter too much if you trash it.
Assume that you power all the way down when you change drives so virus isn't carried over in memory.
Your boot disk might have been infected. How about downloading another one.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[tomaso11]

If your own original drive was o.k before you unplugged it there is no reason it shouldnt work.Try clearing NVRAM if you can find correct key. Double check bios for something you have missed.Clear CMOS.

Thomas

 

[thebatpeople]

Clearing the CMOS seemed like the easiest. The only way I know how to do that is remove the battery. Replaced it and entered the info for my 4GB. It came back to life. The other 2 are still dead. Oh well, I got back the one I was worried about.

Thanks,
Tim

 

[rclarke250]

Most of the older motherboards needed you to go into bios when a different hdd was installed and you had to let it detect ide drives every time,then save and exit the bios. Rich

I shall use google before asking stupid questions!

 

[thebatpeople]

Sorry I didn't put that in my outline of what happened. I was letting it auto-detect the drives, but it could not for some reason. I tried manually inputting the info to the bios, but that didn't work. I only retained the use of the origial 4GB drive after I removed the battery, put it back and manually (auto-detect didn't work again) input the drive info. That trick didn't work for the other two drives.
I was wondering if the boot records were damaged on the 8.4GB drive and what I could use to replace them?

Thanks,
Tim